Staff Platform Software Engineer

It started with a simple idea: what if surgery could be less invasive and recovery less painful? Nearly 30 years later, that question still fuels everything we do at Intuitive. As a global leader in robotic-assisted surgery and minimally invasive care, our technologies like the da Vinci surgical system and Ion have transformed how care is delivered for millions of patients worldwide. 

Were a team of engineers, clinicians, and innovators united by one purpose: to make surgery smarter, safer, and more human. Every day, our work helps care teams perform with greater precision and patients recover faster, improving outcomes around the world. 

The problems we solve demand creativity, rigor, and collaboration. The work is challenging, but deeply meaningful because every improvement we make has the potential to change a life. 

The Future Forward organization is Intuitive’s advanced concepts group. We explore emerging technologies, prototype next-generation solutions, and build software experiences that shape the future of robotic-assisted surgery. 

If you're ready to contribute to something bigger than yourself and help transform the future of healthcare, you'll find your purpose here. 

Primary Function of Position:

As a Staff Platform Software Engineer, you will act as a technical lead in many aspects of the software development for a novel surgical robotic platform. This is an exciting opportunity to lead a technical team focused on developing new solutions to address significant unmet patient needs.

In this position, you will drive the software architecture definition and the implementation for a new surgical robotic system in support of new or emerging applications, creating cross-functional alignment while delivering high value technical solutions.

Critical to the success of this role is experience in leading small technical teams to successfully drive product specification and early engineering development for new technology-based instruments and platforms, from inception to early feasibility studies and regulatory clearances.

The successful candidate must excel in a high-energy small, focused team environment, be able to drive to solutions from rough requirements and methodical prototype iterations, and have a commitment to high product quality that places patients first.

Quick learning and a desire to understand requirements from a user’s and engineering’s perspective are essential to become a valuable system developer.  A strong sense of shared responsibility and shared reward is required, as is the ability to make work fun and interesting. Supporting you will be a development and management team that knows and cares about what you are doing and wants you to succeed.

Essential Job Duties

• Gather high-level cross-functional requirements, ranging from customer-facing requirements to clinical and safety requirements, and cybersecurity requirements.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders on the definition of development plans and timelines, that combine technical needs with schedule and resource need.
• Identify interfaces and communication requirements between hardware and software components, architect modular and testable software that supports the system high-level behaviors.
• Support prototyping and development activities of novel surgical robotic platforms, by leveraging and adapting the existing infrastructure that is shared across all Intuitive robotic systems; learn from each iteration, refine and extend code quickly and methodically.
• Lead formal risk analysis; identify additional hardware requirements and develop software mitigations.
• Act as software lead in the high-level specification, bring-up and integration of new custom PCAs and FPGA IP.
• Perform detailed design, development, documentation and support verification activities of embedded software and supervisory state machines, in compliance with regulatory requirements and Intuitive's internal guidelines.
• Contribute broadly to multiple areas of software development for our distributed multi-processor systems, including but not limited to video and servo hardware control and monitoring, inter-processor communication subsystem development, system diagnostic and service application development, user interface development
• Apply high level and specialized industry expertise that results in new innovations and problem-solving approaches that can be leveraged across multiple products.
• Represent your project ably in interactions externally with key customer collaborators and internally within the company.

Required Education and Training

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering, or similar technical field.
• A minimum of 12 years of experience in developing and supporting embedded systems (or 8 years with a Master’s degree, or 5 years with a PhD degree).

Required Skills and Experience

• Fluent in designing and developing mission-critical cross-platform code in C++ or C, with focus on embedded and real time systems (e.g. QNX).
• Fluent with embedded compute architectures, and their development and testing methodologies, including hardware debugging.
• Fluent with communication protocols such as TCP/IP, CAN, serialization protocols.
• Fluent with memory management, concurrency, synchronous and asynchronous event handling.
• Working knowledge of Python or other scripting languages for automation, diagnostics and testing. Familiarity with Vivado and other FPGA development tools.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Familiarity with servo-controls and electro-mechanical systems.
• Experience designing software products in a regulated industry or for mission critical applications; comfort with concepts of design input, design output, traceability, risk analysis, and mitigations.
• Familiarity with medical technology projects from inception through field validation to launch. Strong understanding of medical product ecosystem services.
• Familiarity with CUDA programming and memory management concepts.
• Cyber-security concepts such as secure boot, authentication and encryption.
• Hands-on engineering experience with proven ability to work effectively in a team environment.
   

Working Conditions

• none

Due to the nature of our business and the role, please note that Intuitive and/or your customer(s) may require that you show current proof of vaccination against certain diseases including COVID-19.  Details can vary by role.

Intuitive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, genetic information or any other status protected under federal, state, or local applicable laws.

Mandatory Notices

U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer:  In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees
who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.

Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government’s licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).  

For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee’s
start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes. 

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with fair chance laws.

Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

This position may be filled at a different job level than listed here depending on
business need and/or on the selected candidate’s experience, knowledge and skills.
Compensation will be based primarily on the job level at which the role is filled and the
candidate’s qualifications, consistent with applicable law.

We provide market-competitive compensation packages, inclusive of base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of range for the role, as actual pay will be determined based on several factors, including experience, skills, and qualifications. The target compensation ranges are listed.