Staff Software Engineer

It started with a simple idea: what if surgery could be less invasive and recovery less painful? Nearly 30 years later, that question still fuels everything we do at Intuitive. As a global leader in robotic-assisted surgery and minimally invasive care, our technologies—like the da Vinci surgical system and Ion—have transformed how care is delivered for millions of patients worldwide.

We’re a team of engineers, clinicians, and innovators united by one purpose: to make surgery smarter, safer, and more human. Every day, our work helps care teams perform with greater precision and patients recover faster, improving outcomes around the world.

The problems we solve demand creativity, rigor, and collaboration. The work is challenging, but deeply meaningful—because every improvement we make has the potential to change a life.

If you’re ready to contribute to something bigger than yourself and help transform the future of healthcare, you’ll find your purpose here.

Primary Function of Position

As a Staff Software Engineer reporting to the Managing Staff Software Engineer in the MP Platform Engineering group, you will be the technical leader responsible for the architecture and implementation of mixed-criticality embedded virtualization. You’ll define how a next-generation surgical robotic system safely consolidates critical/real-time and non-critical software onto shared hardware. You will own the key elements of the virtualization safety strategy: partitioning architecture, hypervisor configuration, silicon and platform software tuning for freedom from interference.

Beyond virtualization, you will leverage your broad expertise and unique technical knowledge to contribute to company objectives, lead cross-functional projects from concept through completion, and coach colleagues in advancing their technical expertise. You will take ownership of multiple aspects of the embedded platform, exercising independent judgment on ambiguous, high-impact problems and influencing senior stakeholders on technical direction and associated risk.

In your first year, you will

• Ramp on the platform's hardware/software stack, safety requirements, and existing hypervisor deployments.

• Deliver an architecture recommendation for the hypervisor strategy, accounting for partitioning, determinism, and the safety implications of each hypervisor's certification posture.

• Characterize behavior on target hardware and produce the initial analysis artifacts demonstrating freedom from interference.

• Stand up the instrumentation needed to give the team visibility into timing, utilization, and VM/platform health.

Essential Job Duties

• Define the virtualization safety architecture for a mixed-criticality system, ensuring spatial and temporal isolation between safety-critical and non-safety-critical applications.

• Prototype and evaluate Xen and QNX hypervisors, defining an architecture based on safety, determinism, certifiability, and platform fit.

• Own hypervisor system configuration and integration, implementing creative solutions to overcome platform limitations and gaps in vendor support.

• Architect and implement deterministic inter-VM communication and device virtualization using virtio, shared memory, and PCIe/other device passthrough.

• Plan and execute the analysis and verification needed to demonstrate freedom from interference, deterministic timing, and safe failure behavior in a regulated environment.

• Lead failure modes and effects analysis for the virtualized platform, translating identified failures and technology limitations into design mitigations, fault containment, and defined recovery or degraded behaviors.

• Build platform observability that exposes guest and hypervisor health, resource utilization, latency, jitter, and other relevant system health signals on target hardware

Required Skills and Experience

• Demonstrated expertise in designing scalable, high-performance embedded software architectures; advanced proficiency in modern C++ and Python for real-time systems.

• Experience building from 0 to 1: define, build, and evaluate technical prototypes that de-risk platform decisions early, translating open architectural questions into measurable experiments on target hardware.

• Extensive experience in Linux/QNX environments, including kernel modules, resource managers, POSIX applications, and distributed inter-processor communication frameworks.

• Proven expertise with FPGAs, hardware accelerators, PCIe transport/configuration/enumeration concepts, and network stacks; strong ability to root-cause interdependent hardware/software problems.

• Proven track record of leading strategic technical initiatives from concept through completion; ability to work independently and drive results with limited supervision.

• Exceptional communication skills with demonstrated ability to articulate complex technical concepts and influence senior leadership across organizational levels.

• Strong leadership capabilities, including mentoring engineers at all levels, providing technical direction, and potentially supervising activities of others.

Required Education and Training

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related engineering discipline.

• Minimum of 12 years of related experience with a Bachelor's degree; or 8 years with a Master's degree; or a PhD with 5 years of experience.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience with Xen internals (dom0/domU, PV/HVM/PVH, xl configuration, Xen on ARM or x86) or with hypervisor contributions upstream.

• Experience with functional safety and regulatory standards such as ISO 26262, IEC 61508, DO-178C/DO-297, IEC 62304, ISO 14971, or IEC 60601, including partitioning and interference requirements.

• Familiarity with Ethernet fundamentals & OSI layers, clear understanding of Time Sensitive Networking standards and features (802.1AS, Qbv etc.).

• Familiarity with modern build and CI systems (Bazel, Nix, Jenkins) and with Python for automation, analysis, and test.

Due to the nature of our business and the role, please note that Intuitive and/or your customer(s) may require that you show current proof of vaccination against certain diseases including COVID-19.  Details can vary by role.

Intuitive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, genetic information or any other status protected under federal, state, or local applicable laws.

Mandatory Notices

U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer:  In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees
who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.

Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government’s licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).  

For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee’s
start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes. 

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with fair chance laws.

Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

This position may be filled at a different job level than listed here depending on
business need and/or on the selected candidate’s experience, knowledge and skills.
Compensation will be based primarily on the job level at which the role is filled and the
candidate’s qualifications, consistent with applicable law.

We provide market-competitive compensation packages, inclusive of base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of range for the role, as actual pay will be determined based on several factors, including experience, skills, and qualifications. The target compensation ranges are listed.