Staff Platform Software Engineer

About the Role

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. You will drive the software architecture definition and implementation for a new surgical robotic system, creating cross-functional alignment while delivering high-value technical solutions.

Critical to success in this role is experience leading small technical teams to drive product specification and early engineering development for new technology-based instruments and platforms, from inception to early feasibility studies and regulatory clearances. You must excel in a high-energy, small, focused team environment, drive solutions from rough requirements, and iterate methodically. A strong sense of shared responsibility and a commitment to high product quality that places patients first are essential.

Responsibilities

• Gather high-level cross-functional requirements, including customer-facing, clinical, safety, and cybersecurity requirements.
• Collaborate with cross-functional stakeholders to define development plans and timelines that balance technical needs with schedule and resource constraints.
• Identify interfaces and communication requirements between hardware and software components; architect modular and testable software supporting system high-level behaviors.
• Support prototyping and development of novel surgical robotic platforms by leveraging and adapting existing infrastructure shared across Intuitive robotic systems.
• 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 verification of embedded software and supervisory state machines in compliance with regulatory requirements and internal guidelines.
• Contribute to multiple areas of software development for distributed multi-processor systems, including video and servo hardware control, inter-processor communication, system diagnostics, service applications, and user interface development.
• Apply high-level and specialized industry expertise to drive innovations and problem-solving approaches leveraged across multiple products.
• Represent your project in interactions with external customer collaborators and internal stakeholders.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a 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).

Skills

• Fluent in designing and developing mission-critical cross-platform code in C++ or C, with a focus on embedded and real-time systems (e.g., QNX).
• Fluent with embedded compute architectures and their development/testing methodologies, including hardware debugging.
• Fluent with communication protocols such as TCP/IP, CAN, and 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: Familiarity with servo-controls and electro-mechanical systems.
• Preferred: Experience designing software in regulated industries or for mission-critical applications; comfort with design input, output, traceability, risk analysis, and mitigations.
• Preferred: Familiarity with medical technology projects from inception through field validation to launch, and understanding of the medical product ecosystem.
• Preferred: Familiarity with CUDA programming and memory management concepts.
• Preferred: Knowledge of cybersecurity concepts such as secure boot, authentication, and encryption.
• Preferred: Hands-on engineering experience with a proven ability to work effectively in a team environment.

Pay

The target base salary range for this role is:

• Region 1: $216,400 - $311,400
• Region 2: $183,900 - $264,700

Compensation will be based on the job level, candidate’s qualifications, experience, skills, and consistent with applicable law. Market-competitive packages include base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of the range.

Schedule

• Shift: Day
• Workplace Type: Onsite (fully onsite role)

Due to the nature of this role, proof of vaccination against certain diseases, including COVID-19, may be required.