Staff Machine Control Engineer

Intuitive•San Carlos, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

Intuitive is seeking an experienced machine controls engineer to lead development of advanced mechatronic instrumentation for patient-care applications. The role focuses on architecting and developing control and sensing software for medical robots or diagnostic instrumentation, from prototype through commercialization. It requires hands-on work with mechatronic hardware, experimental design, empirical data collection, and data analysis and visualization. Experience with low-latency machine controls, high-precision optical control, and biological sample handling is highly desired. The position is based on-site at offices in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The engineer will work with embedded systems, electrical, systems, and mechanical engineers, as well as a multidisciplinary engineering team and company leadership, to develop and deliver instrument capabilities and technical milestones. The work includes software design and implementation, system bring-up and optimization, testing, documentation, and debugging. Software development must support the company’s Quality System and medical-device development requirements.

Requirements

Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science or a related field with at least 8 years of industry experience, or a Ph.D. with at least 5 years of industry experience in systems control and sensing.
Strong knowledge of programming languages for real-time and pseudo-real-time control, including C#, C, and C++, on Linux OS.
Demonstrated experience architecting and writing motion-control, sensing, and state-machine code for at least one diagnostic instrument or medical robot that reached production.
Experience with low-latency machine controls for time-sensitive applications.
Strong experimental design, empirical data collection, and analysis and visualization skills supporting design iteration and optimization, using scripting languages such as Python.
Experience developing medical-device software in accordance with FDA requirements, including software risk analysis and cybersecurity, through product development phases: design, implementation, debugging, verification, validation, and transfer to manufacturing.
Strong analytical skills and a creative mindset.
Bachelor’s, master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related field.

Nice To Haves

Experience controlling high-speed precision optics.
Experience with instrumentation involving biological sample processing.
Experience using OpenCV for camera sensing or computer-vision applications.
Strong background in performance optimization to ensure deterministic execution of predefined software protocols.
Experience developing or interfacing with backend software for instrument data storage and network transmission.

Responsibilities

Architect, design, and implement control and sensing software for advanced mechatronic instrumentation.
Work hands-on with mechatronic hardware during system bring-up, calibration, operation, experimentation, and debugging.
Lead system optimization and debugging through experimental design, execution, and data analysis and visualization.
Work with embedded systems and electrical engineers to develop software interfaces to lower-level controllers and firmware.
Collaborate with systems and mechanical engineering to architect, select, and optimize electrical control boards, motors, sensors, and other hardware components.
Write clean, structured, maintainable code and document software designs for different instrument configurations, including error recovery.
Write and execute unit tests to ensure excellent software test coverage.
Use scripting languages such as Python for hardware prototype bring-up, test automation, and data analysis and visualization.
Generate software requirements, design specifications, and software test protocols for the company’s Quality System.
Work with a multidisciplinary engineering team and company leadership to deliver technical milestones.
Prioritize and debug reported software issues and bugs.