Sr. Embedded Software Engineer

Job Description

Primary Function of Position:

As a Sr. Embedded Software Engineer, you will work with a group of talented and dedicated people to improve and extend Intuitive robotic product lines. You will contribute broadly to the Future Forward group, with focus on the embedded and platform software at the heart of Intuitive systems, with influence ranging from firmware to user interface and test infrastructure.

As a member of the Future Forward engineering team, you will be involved in designing, implementing, and integrating complex functionality into complete surgical robot solutions and seeing these through human use and product release.

The successful candidate must excel in a high-energy small, focused team environment, be able to drive to solutions from rough requirements and methodical prototype iterations, and have a commitment to high product quality that places patients first.

Quick learning and a desire to understand requirements from a user’s and engineering’s perspective are essential to become a valuable system developer. A dedicated sense of shared responsibility and shared reward is required, as is the ability to make work fun and interesting. Supporting you will be a development and management team that knows and cares about what you are doing and wants you to succeed.

Essential Job Duties

This position has responsibility for all aspects related to the development of embedded software and associated tooling for robotic surgical systems, such as:

• Video and camera processing, including hardware interfaces and image processing.
• Servo and hardware control and monitoring.
• Extension of current processing frameworks to new processors and hardware designs.
• Inter-processor communication and distributed multi-processor systems that form the backbone of Intuitive’s surgical systems.
• System diagnostic and development of service applications that are laptop-based and network-based.
• Selection and integration of external OEM devices.
• Testing at the unit and sub-system level, and at the system integration level.
• Software build tools, development and test environment, and change control.

Specifically, the Sr. Embedded Software Engineer is responsible for:

• Cross-functional requirements discussions, ranging from customer-facing clinical needs to safety requirement.
• Translating early requirements into prototype implementations for early evaluation and assessment for a novel and sophisticated robotic system.
• Contributing to hazard and failure mode analysis and defining appropriate mitigations.
• Methodically refining and iterating to finalize the design that meets the requirements, while balancing feasibility, schedule, and resource needs.
• Developing, documenting, and implementing detailed software designs and conducting unit tests ahead of system integration and human use.
• Generating supporting documentation according to Intuitive development and documentation guidelines.
• Ensuring that medical device designs meet product quality and safety requirements, in compliance with design control processes defined in the Quality Management System.

Qualifications

Required Skills and Experience

• Fluent in designing and developing mission-critical cross-platform code in C++ or C, with focus on embedded and real time systems (e.g. QNX), including application, board bring-up, device drivers for multi-core and multi-processor architectures.
• Working knowledge of Python or Matlab for automation, diagnostics and testing.
• Familiarity with communication protocols such as TCP/IP, CAN and serialization protocols such as protobuf.
• Strong problem-solving skills and debugging of complex embedded software and electromechanical systems.
• In-depth knowledge of failure mode and risk analysis, with experience working on safety-critical, product-focused designs.
• Excellent verbal and written communications skills, with the ability to communicate effectively across all levels and organizations.
• A real excitement to learn and to get to the bottom of tough technical problems, and to help patient’s lives.

Required Education and Training

• Minimum Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering, or similar technical field.
• A minimum of 8 years of experience in developing and supporting embedded systems (or 6 years with a Master’s degree, or 3 years with a PhD degree).

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Fluent working with version control systems such as Git or SVN and build systems such as GNU Make and CMake.
• Familiarity with CUDA programming and memory management concepts.
• Integration of third-party libraries including cross-compilation.
• Cyber-security concepts such as secure boot, authentication and encryption.
• Hands-on engineering experience with proven ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Ability to build and maintain relationships across supported organizations.
• Experience in all phases of the product development lifecycle including design, implementation, debug, verification, validation, and transfer to manufacturing
• Experience designing software products in a regulated industry or for mission critical applications; comfort with concepts of design input, design output, traceability, risk analysis, and mitigations.