Staff Electrical Engineer

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

Job summary

Intuitive is seeking a Staff Electrical Engineer to join the APD team in San Francisco. You will define embedded architecture, contribute to motor control systems, and design high-speed compute platform PCAs for robotic surgery applications.

You will work in a small, startup-like multidisciplinary team to deliver features, verify, validate, and release the product. The role emphasizes fast learning, rigorous design control, and collaboration across engineering domains.

Qualifications

• Design, bring-up, and integration of custom PCAs.
• Architect communication, processing, and distribution of electronic subsystems.

Responsibilities

• Design, bring-up, and integration of PCAs across the product.
• Collaborate on system design with FPGA, mechanical, software, and controls teams.
• Write design docs, verification plans, and risk mitigations.

Skills

Embedded architecture

Motor control

PCB design

FPGA design

System integration

Tools

FPGA toolchains

PCB CAD tools

Job description

Job Description

Primary Function of Position:

We are seeking a Staff Electrical Engineer to join the Advanced Product Development (APD) research and development team at Intuitive Surgical. In this role you will be responsible for both embedded architecture definition, motor control systems and the design and implementation of high-speed compute platform PCAs. As a Staff Electrical Engineer, you will work with a small multidisciplinary start-up-like team chartered with inventing the future of computer-augmented robotic surgery. You will be involved in delivering features by integrating complex functionality into complete surgical robot solutions, and seeing these through verification, validation and product release.

The successful candidate must excel in a high-energy focused small-team environment, be able to drive to solutions from rough requirements, and have a commitment to high product quality. Quick learning and a desire to deeply understand requirements, develop high-fidelity prototypes, and rapidly iterate are essential. A strong sense of shared responsibility and shared reward is required, as is the desire to make work fun, collaborative, and interesting. Supporting you will be a development and management team that knows and cares about what you are doing and is a partner in your continued career development and success.

Roles and Responsibilities:

• Design, bring-up, and integration of custom printed circuit assemblies (PCAs).
• Architect communication, processing, and distribution of electronic subsystems across the product. Challenge the status quo architecture to propose alternate, efficient and latest tech stacks,
• Collaborate on system design and architecture with other Advanced Development engineering team members, including FPGA logic design, mechanical, software and controls.
• Identify and implement key components in actuation of robotic systems (e.g. position and motion sensing, vision, embedded display and UI, and the driving of brushed and brushless DC motors).
• Implement PCB designs that balance performance, cost, and manufacturability.
• Perform board level bring-up and troubleshooting.
• Perform formal risk analysis and develop mitigations.
• Discover and develop new vendors and their technologies – develop the design and performance understanding to transform these into robust building blocks for future platforms.
• Write detailed design documentation, including specifications and verification plans per Intuitive’s guidelines.
• Write V&V (Verification and Validation) protocols and associated scripts, as well as protocol execution.
• Follow rigorous design control methodology from design specification through design transfer to manufacturing.