Staff Mechanical Engineer (Flexible Instruments)
About The Position
The Staff Mechanical Engineer will serve as a technical and design lead for developing advanced energy products and subsystems at Intuitive. The role spans early concept exploration through commercialization, translating ambiguous clinical and technical needs into robust architectures and leading rapid prototype iterations to reduce key technical risks. The engineer will resolve complex mechanical, materials, and manufacturing design issues and collaborate across disciplines to troubleshoot and identify root causes of system-level issues. The position focuses on developing advanced energy applications for novel clinical uses across robotic surgical systems. The successful candidate takes end-to-end ownership in a small, high-energy team and delivers high-quality prototypes, data-driven decisions, and scalable designs. The role involves collaboration with engineering, testing, clinical, quality, and manufacturing teams, as well as observing clinical cases and supporting pre-clinical and clinical activities. This is a full-time, fully onsite position in Sunnyvale, California. The role requires commuting to or relocating to Sunnyvale and involves up to 10% travel, which may include international travel.
Requirements
- Typically at least 12 years of relevant experience, or at least 8 years with a master's degree.
- Demonstrated success as a technical and/or design lead in cross-functional R&D teams, influencing decisions across engineering, testing, clinical, quality, and manufacturing.
- Ability to originate novel concepts and rapidly convert ideas into functional prototypes to evaluate technical feasibility and clinical value.
- Track record of working in ambiguous environments with limited data, identifying key risks, and prioritizing experiments to accelerate learning.
- Ability to determine what to prototype versus analyze, balancing speed, risk reduction, and long-term scalability.
- Deep technical experience in multiple catheter and flexible-instrument design areas, such as shaft construction, adhesives and bonding, sealing and insulation, electrical component integration, and thermal management.
- Hands-on experience with rapid prototyping methods for flexible instruments and associated components, including 3D printing, plastics processing, metal fabrication, and bench-level assembly.
- Proficiency in CAD-based mechanical design; SolidWorks is preferred.
- Experience across product development lifecycle phases, including proof of concept, design, implementation, debugging, verification, qualification, and transfer.
- High autonomy and ability to work independently with limited supervision to develop approaches to solutions.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, including presenting tradeoffs, risks, and technical rationale to varied audiences.
- Experience with FDA QSR 21 CFR Part 820, ISO 13485, ISO 14971, and related standards.
- Minimum education of a bachelor's or master's degree in mechanical engineering, mechatronics, biomedical engineering, or a related engineering or scientific discipline, or equivalent work experience.
- Must be available to work full-time and commute to or relocate to Sunnyvale, California.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with energy delivery devices.
- Experience developing flexible electromechanical devices.
- Understanding of medical system integration and interfaces.
Responsibilities
- Lead technical and design work in a small, cross-functional team developing and verifying concepts for advanced energy catheters and/or flexible electromechanical instruments.
- Define early product architecture, interfaces, and design requirements, and translate feasibility prototypes into scalable products.
- Develop, implement, test, and document solutions, processes, and designs according to corporate standards and departmental procedures.
- Assemble and test devices hands-on for proof-of-concept, design development, pre-clinical, and verification and validation activities.
- Investigate emerging design or manufacturing defects and failures and determine their root causes.
- Develop and document design and manufacturing materials, including inspection procedures, assembly instructions, test methods, purchase specifications, bills of materials, and part and assembly drawings, using appropriate change control.
- Collaborate with clinical engineering to assess product concepts and conduct tradeoff analyses of proposed designs and feature sets.
- Partner with testing engineering and NPI to define verification approaches, ensure design outputs are measurable, and support design transfer.
- Observe clinical cases and interview clinical experts to inform designs; support pre-clinical labs and clinical cases.
- Establish individual goals consistent with overall project goals.
- Perform other duties as required to support the company's strategy and goals.
Benefits
- Market-competitive compensation package including base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
