Sr. Principal Ultrasound Engineer, Mounds View, MN

About the role

Medtronic is seeking a Senior Principal Ultrasound Engineer to serve as a recognized technical leader in ultrasound and acoustic design. This role is based onsite in Mounds View, MN and will require up to 25% travel time.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and own transducer architecture, balancing acoustic performance, power, thermal, cost, form factor, and regulatory constraints.
• Establish technical roadmaps that align with multi-year product and platform strategies.
• Lead architectural trade-off studies and make build/buy/partner recommendations for critical subsystems.
• Provide technical oversight of key suppliers and contract manufacturers.
• Partner with senior leaders in firmware, software, algorithms, systems, regulatory, and clinical to align technical direction.
• Lead design reviews, architectural reviews, and technical risk reviews across programs.
• Mentor and coach engineers; actively develop technical career paths and build organizational depth.
• Influence hiring, technical onboarding, and competency development for the broader engineering community.
• Drive innovation pipelines, generate patentable IP, and grow Medtronic's ultrasound patent portfolio.
• Contribute to publications in peer-reviewed venues (posters, abstracts, journal articles) and represent Medtronic at industry conferences when appropriate.
• Engage with academic partners, key suppliers, and standards bodies (IEC, AIUM, IEEE) to shape technology direction.
• Serve as a technical authority during regulatory submissions and audits.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Physics, or a related discipline with 10+ years of relevant experience; or Master's degree with 8+ years; or PhD with 6+ years.
• PhD in a relevant discipline with publications in ultrasound, acoustics, or medical imaging.
• Expertise with piezoelectric arrays, CMUTs, and/or PMUTs, including FEA-driven co-design with electronics.
• Deep, hands-on experience with ultrasound system and electronics simulation software, including several of the following: - Field II and k-Wave for acoustic field, beam pattern, and pulse-echo simulation - FOCUS for transducer and acoustic propagation modeling - PZFlex / OnScale for piezoelectric transducer and coupled acoustic-structural FEA - COMSOL Multiphysics for multiphysics modeling of transducers and acoustic media - ANSYS (Mechanical, HFSS, SIwave, Icepak) for structural, electromagnetic, signal/power integrity, and thermal analysis.
• Proven ability to lead technical teams, mentor senior engineers, and influence without direct authority.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience presenting to executive leadership and external stakeholders.
• Experience leading ASIC or custom silicon programs for ultrasound front-ends, knowledge in back-end digital design, including high-speed digital interfaces and digital beamforming.
• Patents in ultrasound electronics, beamforming, or transducer integration.
• Direct experience with advanced beamforming architectures (synthetic aperture, plane-wave, coherent compounding, adaptive beamforming, micro-beamforming).
• Exposure to multiple ultrasound modalities such as cart-based diagnostic, point-of-care, intracardiac echo (ICE), intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), endoscopic, or therapeutic/HIFU systems.
• Experience building and scaling technical organizations across geographies.