Staff Embedded Software Engineer

Intuitive•Sunnyvale, CA

About The Position

The Staff Embedded Software Engineer will support prototyping and development of novel surgical robotic platforms within Intuitive’s Future Forward advanced concepts group. The role involves adapting shared infrastructure across Intuitive robotic systems and iteratively refining software for next-generation robotic-assisted surgery solutions. The engineer gathers cross-functional requirements, helps define development plans and timelines, identifies hardware/software interfaces, and architects modular, testable software for system-level behaviors. The role leads formal risk analysis and software integration work for custom PCAs and FPGA IP, and performs embedded software design, development, documentation, and verification in compliance with regulatory requirements and internal guidelines. The position contributes across distributed multiprocessor software, including video and servo hardware control and monitoring, inter-processor communications, diagnostics and service applications, and user interfaces. It also applies specialized industry expertise to new solutions and represents projects in interactions with customer collaborators and internal teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a similar technical field.
At least 12 years of experience developing and supporting embedded systems, or 8 years with a master’s degree, or 5 years with a Ph.D.
Fluency designing and developing mission-critical cross-platform code in C++ or C, with a focus on embedded and real-time systems such as QNX.
Fluency with embedded compute architectures and their development and testing methodologies, including hardware debugging.
Fluency with communication protocols such as TCP/IP, CAN, and serialization protocols.
Fluency with memory management, concurrency, and synchronous and asynchronous event handling.
Working knowledge of Python or another scripting language for automation, diagnostics, and testing.
Familiarity with Vivado and other FPGA development tools.

Nice To Haves

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

Responsibilities

Gather high-level cross-functional requirements, including customer-facing, clinical, safety, and cybersecurity requirements.
Collaborate with stakeholders to define development plans and timelines that account for technical needs, schedules, and resources.
Identify interfaces and communications requirements between hardware and software components, and architect modular, testable software supporting high-level system behaviors.
Support prototyping and development of novel surgical robotic platforms by adapting shared infrastructure, learning from iterations, and refining and extending code methodically.
Lead formal risk analysis, identify additional hardware requirements, and develop software mitigations.
Act as software lead for high-level specifications, bring-up, and integration of new custom PCAs and FPGA IP.
Design, develop, document, and support verification of embedded software and supervisory state machines in compliance with regulatory requirements and internal guidelines.
Contribute to software for distributed multiprocessor systems, including video and servo hardware control and monitoring, inter-processor communications, diagnostics and service applications, and user interfaces.
Apply specialized industry expertise to develop innovations and problem-solving approaches that can be leveraged across multiple products.
Represent the project in interactions with customer collaborators and internal company stakeholders.