Senior Mechanical 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

Intuitive Surgical designs and manufactures highly complex mechanical systems for use in surgery. These systems include both capital equipment and “consumables” in the form of surgical instruments and accessories. The Senior Mechanical Engineer for Instrument and Accessory Advanced Product Development will be a member of a small team responsible for exploring and developing early product concepts and technologies that will help feed the da Vinci product pipeline. The successful candidate will lead early assessment, design, development, and testing of novel concepts for instrument and accessory related products.

The candidate will help to identify and evaluate new technologies in light of customer and company needs, establish design requirements to meet customer needs, work with suppliers and other outside companies and consultants to realize viable technical solutions, and refine designs for transfer to the New Product Development organization for commercialization. He/she/they must excel in a high-energy team environment and be capable of creative problem solving when faced with the time pressures and incomplete information typical of early- stage product development. The successful candidate must have outstanding technical depth in relevant areas, and be as comfortable collaborating and leading across organizational boundaries as they are working independently.

Essential Job Duties

• Work within cross-functional project teams to create, evaluate, and prove out new product architectures and refine them for hand off to new Product Development
• Collaborate with subject matter experts to understand the clinical, usability, and other needs of users of da Vinci systems as they relate to surgical instruments and accessories.
• Develop technical requirements for designs based on an understanding of customer needs, commercial objectives (e.g. cost of goods), regulatory requirements, and feasibility constraints.
• Perform conceptual design, detailed design, analytical modeling, prototyping, data analysis, and troubleshooting of novel instruments and accessories for the da Vinci robotic surgical system.
• Develop and perform early performance testing, with assistance from other functions as needed. Assist with evaluation of prototypes by supporting bench, ex-vivo, and in-vivo laboratory testing with clinical experts.
• Develop and manage relationships with key partners.
• Provide written protocols, reports, and presentations related to design activities on an ongoing basis.
• Review mechanical engineering designs of other Intuitive engineers in both a formal and informal capacity.
• Refine and document product designs as needed to support successful transfer into the new product development organization.

Other Functions

• Assess technologies from outside entities for potential licensing and adaptation to the da Vinci product line
• Identify, test, and report on new materials, manufacturing processes, and technologies that could benefit existing products or enable new product designs
• Document, prepare and review patent submissions

Qualifications

Required Skills and Experience

• Minimum five (5) years of experience taking products from concept to production (medical product experience preferred).
• At least eight (8) years of experience with precision mechanical design.
• Familiarity with all phases of the product development lifecycle including design, implementation, debug, verification, qualification, and transfer.
• Understanding of mechatronics, robotics, and servo-controlled systems stron