Senior Embedded Software Engineer - Future Forward

Job Description

As a Senior Embedded Software Engineer in the Future Forward organization, you will work at the forefront of innovation, rapid prototyping, and new product development. You’ll collaborate with talented cross-functional teams—including engineers, clinicians, and product managers—to advance Intuitive’s robotic surgical platform, driving the entire product lifecycle from concept to launch.

In this role, you will design, develop, and integrate embedded and platform software across a complex robotic system, interfacing with hardware, firmware, control algorithms, vision pipelines, user interfaces, and test infrastructure, including fault-injection and diagnostic frameworks. You will contribute to the architecture, implementation, and system-level integration of advanced functionalities into complete surgical robotic platforms, supporting product release and validated human use. Your work will be critical to meeting delivery milestones while ensuring safe, reliable, and compliant operation for patients worldwide.

Success in this role requires excelling in an agile, small-team environment—transforming initial concepts into robust prototypes, methodically iterating designs, and consistently maintaining exceptional product quality with a patient-first mindset.

Essential Job Duties

• Design and develop robust embedded software to enable system infrastructure, including OS drivers, hardware interfaces, real-time data pipelines, inter-processor communication, error handling, and user/test applications.
• Collaborate cross-functionally throughout the product lifecycle with key stakeholders to address clinical needs and safety requirements.
• Translate early requirements into prototype implementations to evaluate, iterate, and advance novel robotic systems.
• Conduct rigorous unit testing to support system integration and ensure reliable, robust system operation.
• Contribute to hazard and failure mode analysis, defining appropriate mitigations.
• Refine and iterate designs, balancing technical requirements, feasibility, schedules, and resource constraints.
• Produce clear and compliant supporting documentation in alignment with Intuitive's development and quality guidelines.
• Ensure all designs meet rigorous quality and safety standards per the Intuitive Quality Management System.