Senior Hardware Test Engineer

Company Description

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.

Job Description

Primary Function of the Position The New Product Verification Department is devoted to assuring safe, reliable, and effective products that exceed patient, surgeon, and hospital expectations. The department plays a vital role in product and process quality, in new product development and production, and in the quality of da Vinci and Ion robotic product lines, including diagnostic systems, endoscopic instrumentation, and supporting accessories. The Senior Test Engineer will work with a team of dedicated individuals within a product development team to assure the quality of new designs, to identify issues related to new designs and processes, and to work with other Test Engineers to develop harmonized test methods.

Essential Job Duties

Test Protocol Development, Execution & Reporting

• Develops high level test plans for instrument, accessories, endoluminal, and vision projects
• Generates and takes ownership of test protocols for Design Verification and Life/ Reliability tests
• Develops clinically relevant test methods ensure design requirements are sufficiently verified by collaborating with appropriate cross functional partners
• Executes test protocols for clinically-based surgical simulation and automated testing utilizing da Vinci surgical system, Ion Systems and/or other test equipment
• Identifies, reports and negotiate problems that arise during feasibility and design verification testing, and escalates new or persistent failure modes to appropriate engineering teams
• Proactively engages with appropriate engineering teams and leads failure investigation and root cause analysis
• Clearly documents test results and observations in test report.

Test Fixture Development:

• Designs test fixtures and other test aids needed to perform Design Verification and Life/ Reliability tests
• Proactively identifies and develops processes and test methods that could benefit from new or updated fixture designs by engaging with design and test engineers

Reasoning Ability: 

• Ability to apply critical thinking to solve problems while leading cross-functional, technical teams in making decisions.
• Ability to influence technical stake holders and suggest process improvements
• Ability to understand and work on complex products and processes                         

Other Responsibilities

• Ability to collaborate with cross functional teams and contribute to the development of product requirements and risk documents
• Effective technical communication across various levels of the organization at core team meetings and design reviews.
• Ensures successful, on-time completion of department and core team projects; communicates constraints and recommends preferred mitigation to direct management when successful project completion is at risk
• Complies with company Department and Standard Operating Procedures
• Effectively translate the functional requirements into appropriate acceptance criteria for testcases and test methods.
• Train test technicians on test methods and procedures

Qualifications

Required Skills and Experience

• Medical Device Verification/Validation experience is required
• Understanding of design controls used in the Medical device development is required.
• Ability to perform mechanical engineering calculations needed to support equipment design, including dimensional analysis.
• Experience using tools and measuring equipment (Force Gauge, Calipers, Instron, Oscilloscopes etc.).

• Ability to work indepen