Senior Software Engineer

Intuitive•Sunnyvale, CA

About The Position

The Interaction Software Engineering (ISE) organization is seeking a Senior Software Engineer with strong hands-on development experience to design, develop, optimize, and troubleshoot embedded software applications for the da Vinci surgical robotics systems. You will tackle complex technical challenges and build robust solutions across the full software stack - from embedded modules to platform infrastructure, and distributed data and processing frameworks, and user-facing applications. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality applications across all layers, ensuring seamless integration into the da Vinci systems. Our team empowers application developers with easy-to-use APIs, tools, and reliable, performant runtime software frameworks that accelerate development. This is an opportunity to work on complex yet interesting problems at the intersection of embedded Linux software development, distributed system frameworks (data pipelines, edge inference, inter-process and inter-node communication), and hybrid compute architectures (CPU vs. GPU, edge vs. cloud), all within the da Vinci ecosystem. The ideal candidate is a self-driven, hands-on developer who excels in a high-energy, cross-functional environment, consistently delivers high-quality products and solutions, while taking full end-to-end ownership and demonstrating a strong sense of shared responsibility.

Requirements

Strong modern C++ skills with hands-on experience developing advanced Linux software
Hands-on experience developing software in Python and shell scripts
Strong understanding of systems design principles with a focus on performance, testability, scalability, and maintainability
Experience designing and developing platform-layer APIs, SDKs, or framework interfaces that abstract hardware and OS capabilities for application developers
Extensive hands-on experience implementing software/hardware interfaces in complex devices, including Linux-based interfaces to external devices and network communication interfaces
Familiarity with inter-process communication patterns and distributed messaging (e.g., shared memory, pub/sub, gRPC, or similar RPC frameworks)
Strong problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to analyze complex system issues and troubleshoot software and hardware problems
Self-motivated, flexible team player to support all aspects of software development life cycle with the ability to define goals and work independently in a fast-paced environment
BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field with 7+ years of industry experience; or MS with 5+ years of industry experience

Nice To Haves

Knowledge and hands-on experience with GPU technologies and machine learning frameworks
Experience with containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes) and scaling embedded ML systems in production
Experience building data ingestion or streaming pipelines for edge/embedded environments (e.g., sensor data aggregation, telemetry, or real-time inference)
Familiarity with UI framework integration patterns (e.g., data-binding layers, backend-for-frontend services) that connect platform services to front-end applications

Responsibilities

Design and develop Linux software across all system layers - including OS components, platform/infrastructure services, applications, inter-layer frameworks, libraries, and tools - using modern C++, Python, and shell scripts
Design and maintain APIs, interfaces, and abstractions for the platform service layer that bridges low-level hardware/OS services and upper-level user-facing and data-driven applications
Develop distributed frameworks for edge data processing, ML inference pipelines, and UI data delivery - defining clean service boundaries, transport protocols, and data contracts
Evaluate design trade-offs (e.g., CPU- vs. GPU-intensive, on-device vs. distributed, latency vs. throughput) and make architectural decisions to integrate diverse components within embedded software
Integrate user-facing applications with software platform and infrastructure, designing extensible interfaces that decouple presentation layers from underlying compute and data services
Analyze and optimize run-time system performance using metrics across all system layers, from the operating system and platform/infrastructure to user-facing applications
Create high-quality technical documents capturing key design concepts and principles behind software design and architectures
Write production-ready, high-quality, and easily testable code; improve regression detection and debugging processes