Senior Digital Clinical Dev Engineer – Robotic Surgery

Intuitive Surgical, Inc.; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 158,000 - 268,000; Full time

Job summary

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a Digital Senior Clinical Development Engineer to translate surgeon needs and clinical workflow insights into requirements, risk assessments, validation strategies, and product recommendations for our digital, automated robotic surgery products.

You will lead cross-functional workstreams with engineering, data science, regulatory, and quality teams to plan, execute, and document evaluations, analyze data, and support design controls and training

Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years in medical device industry with a Bachelor's degree, 6 years with a Master's, or 3 years with a PhD.
• Proven experience in supporting a medical product from design to launch.
• Experience in regulated medical device product discovery and/or new product development.
• Experience working with surgeons or clinical experts in OR, simulation, lab, or clinical evaluation settings.
• Strong knowledge of surgical terminology, anatomy, technique, and minimally invasive or robotic surgical workflows.
• Ability to translate clinical needs into user needs, use cases, requirements, clinical performance criteria, and validation plans.
• Ability to work in operating room, simulation, lab, and preclinical environments as required.
• Experience with digital surgery, AI/ML-enabled tools, or robotics (nice to have).
• Familiarity with ISO 14971, usability engineering, clinical validation, and evidence strategies (nice to have).
• Experience with digital interfaces, workflow-integrated software, data-driven product development, annotation workflows, model evaluation, or clinical data review (nice to have).
• Strong systems thinking, analytical skills, data interpretation, test method development, and evidence-based decision-making (nice to have).
• Excellent communication, collaboration, prioritization, escalation, and cross-functional leadership skills in ambiguous technical and clinical environments (nice to have).
• Self-starter and able to react quickly under pressure (nice to have).

Responsibilities

• Translate surgeon needs and clinical workflow insights into requirements, risk assessments, validation strategies, and product recommendations.
• Plan, execute, and document prototype, simulated-use, preclinical, workflow-based, and clinical performance evaluations.
• Partner with engineering, software, systems, data science, human factors, product, regulatory, and quality teams to define requirements and mitigations.
• Lead complex clinical development workstreams, mentor others, and influence cross-functional product direction.
• Support design-control, risk management, regulatory, labeling, training, and customer-facing documentation as needed.
• Maintain expertise in robotic surgery, digital surgery, AI/ML-enabled technology, clinical applications, and emerging standards.

Skills

Medical device experience

Clinical collaboration

OR / simulation experience

Regulatory awareness

Data interpretation

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master's degree

PhD

Job description

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in Sunnyvale, CA, seeks a Digital Senior Clinical Development Engineer to translate surgeon needs and clinical workflow insights into requirements, risk assessments, validation strategies, and product recommendations for our digital, automated robotic surgery products.

You will lead cross-functional workstreams with engineering, data science, regulatory, and quality teams to plan, execute, and document evaluations, analyze data, and support design controls and training