Staff ML Engineer - Real-Time Surgical AI

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 230,000 - 330,000; Full time

Job summary

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in Sunnyvale is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead perception and scene understanding for the da Vinci platform, applying deep learning to surgical imagery in real time.

You will own model lifecycle from research to production, optimize for latency, and integrate ML components with C++ software stacks in a highly regulated medical device environment. You will collaborate with surgeons, clinical scientists, and human factors engineers to translate clinical

Qualifications

• MS/PhD in CS, EE, robotics or related field with cv/ml/3D scene understanding
• 5+ years post-PhD or 7+ years post-MS experience shipping ML systems
• Deep learning for visual recognition with semantic segmentation/object detection
• Probabilistic modeling and Bayesian inference experience
• 3D geometry and spatial reasoning, camera projection models
• Experience with model optimization/deployment for latency-sensitive apps (ONNX, TensorRT)
• Strong Python and PyTorch skills; NumPy/SciPy
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and reproducible research
• Publications or patents in CV/medical image analysis/robotics

Responsibilities

• Design, train, and evaluate deep learning models for semantic understanding of surgical scenes
• Develop probabilistic and structured modeling approaches for real-world data
• Ensure ML components meet real-time performance constraints
• Own end-to-end model lifecycle: architecture, training, optimization, and integration with C++ stack
• Define evaluation methods with clinically meaningful metrics for regulatory submissions
• Collaborate with surgeons and clinical scientists to translate needs into requirements
• Ensure latency, memory, and reliability for embedded robotic platforms
• Mentor junior engineers and promote reproducible research
• Contribute to IP through invention disclosures and patents

Skills

Deep learning (vision)

Probabilistic modeling

3D geometry

Python

PyTorch

C++ development

Model deployment

Education

M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or closely related field

Tools

ONNX

TensorRT

C++ production codebases

.reading large C++ codebases

Job description

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. in Sunnyvale is seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to lead perception and scene understanding for the da Vinci platform, applying deep learning to surgical imagery in real time.

You will own model lifecycle from research to production, optimize for latency, and integrate ML components with C++ software stacks in a highly regulated medical device environment. You will collaborate with surgeons, clinical scientists, and human factors engineers to translate clinical