Sr. AI & Automation Engineer, Robotics

Intuitive; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Intuitive is seeking a Senior AI & Automation Engineer to build AI tools, automation systems, and evaluation capabilities that help researchers and engineers train, test, and evaluate models faster. You will leverage existing AI technologies and develop new tooling, APIs, and workflows that support engineering and research activities on next-generation robotic platforms.

The role emphasizes hands-on engineering to automate experiments, run pipelines, and assess results with statistical

Qualifications

• Experience building AI tooling and automation for research environments.
• Ability to design and run experiments with statistical rigor.
• Strong collaboration with ML researchers and robotics engineers.

Responsibilities

• Build AI tools, APIs, and agent workflows to automate engineering and research work.
• Automate training and fine-tuning workflows from experiments to runs for reproducibility.
• Create automation and integration workflows for simulation and real-robot evaluations.
• Design evaluations that show statistically meaningful improvements.
• Develop logging, analysis, and debugging tools to turn robot sessions into usable data.
• Ensure reliability, security, and safe operation with appropriate human approvals when needed.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools and technologies for measurable impact.
• Document impact and integrate successful tools into team practices.

Skills

AI tooling

Automation engineering

Experiment design

Statistical analysis

Cross-functional teamwork

Robotics systems

Tools

APIs

Automation frameworks

Simulation tools

Job description

Job Description

About the Team

The Future Forward organization is Intuitive's advanced concepts group. We explore emerging technologies, prototype next-generation solutions, and build software experiences that shape the future of robotic-assisted surgery. Our research team is building advanced augmented dexterity capabilities for next-generation robotic platforms.

The Role

Our researchers should spend their time on ideas, not on the manual work required to turn those ideas into results on real robots.

As a Senior AI & Automation Engineer, you will build the AI tools, automation systems, integrations, and evaluation capabilities that help researchers and engineers train, test, and evaluate models faster and make better decisions. You'll leverage existing AI technologies while developing new solutions, from agent-driven workflows and AI tooling to the APIs, services, and automation frameworks that support engineering and research activities.

That could mean agents that set up and run experiments, automation workflows that accelerate testing and evaluation, or tools that sort through logs and video to help teams understand failures and improve outcomes. It's a hands-on engineering role that uses AI to improve how physical AI systems are trained and tested. You'll automate that work; you won't design the models themselves. You'll work closely with ML researchers, simulation engineers, and robotics engineers.

What You'll Do

• Build and integrate AI tools, APIs, and agent workflows that automate engineering and research work across the team.
• Automate the training and fine-tuning workflow, from setting up experiments to launching, tracking, and comparing runs, so researchers can reproduce results without hand-built scripts.
• Build automation and integration workflows that help researchers and engineers evaluate new ideas in simulation and on real robots, quickly, reliably, and at scale.
• Design evaluations and experiments that show, with statistical confidence, whether a change is a real improvement.
• Build logging, analysis, and debugging tools that help the team understand results and failures, and that turn robot sessions into data the team can train on.
• Make what you build reliable, secure, and safe to run, with human approval where it matters and responsible use of AI throughout.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools, models, and technologies, and bring in the ones that deliver measurable impact.
• Measure the impact of what you build, document it clearly, and make successful tools part of how the team operates.