Clinical Research Engineer - Advanced Energy

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

The Team

The Clinical Research Engineering team at Intuitive is a cross-functional team dedicated to the creation of innovative medical technologies and robotic systems. We develop transformational technologies to address the major pain points and unmet needs in healthcare. Our goal is to revolutionize the future of healthcare by developing platforms and technologies that empower providers and teams to deliver life-enhancing care.

Primary Function of the Position
The Clinical Research Engineer uses their in-depth clinical, scientific, and technical knowledge to collaborate with engineers, physicians, user experience researchers, and other internal and external stakeholders to develop new product concepts being incubated in early exploration. The individual brings their clinical device development expertise to new platform and technology development, and is responsible for identifying, documenting, and understanding user needs and subsequently communicating these needs to inform concept design and development. The Clinical Research Engineer is responsible for developing and executing an experimental strategy to assess performance and safety of prototype designs and is a key contributor in the design and development iteration process. The individual will take an active role in the concept design team by assessing and communicating clinical risks, providing design guidance, inventing new concepts, and executing the overall clinical strategy. The Clinical Research Engineer also partners closely with team members such regulatory, clinical affairs, finance, and more to develop the clinical indication and commercialization strategy.

Responsibilities

This position has responsibility and authority for the following:

Advanced research and new product concept development

• Research disease states and medical technologies associated with new business opportunities for Intuitive and applying their in-depth knowledge to become an expert within the company on the new products being developed and their clinical application.

• Collaborate closely with engineers and physicians to define clinical performance goals and potential risks for new products in early phase development.

• Work with key opinion leaders, subject matter experts, physicians, and other stakeholders to identify clinical goals and translate those needs for user-centric design and development of new platforms, procedures, instruments, and accessories.

• Collaborate with other organizations within the company as needed leading the clinical aspects of new programs and platform development: design engineering, regulatory, human factors, industrial design, training, marketing, and others.

• Develop and execute clinical derisking pathways including both pre-clinical and clinical feasibility studies.

• Contribute to market development and segmentation for new clinical applications.

Clinical innovation

• Develop novel clinical models and metrics for technology evaluation and prototype performance assessment.

• Develop novel procedures and workflows for new technologies.

• Design, develop, and execute clinical evaluations of prototypes with the ability to translate feedback to the engineering team for technology acceleration.

• Conduct design iteration assessments of products both internally and with external key opinion leaders.

• Identify and drive product enhancements and new product ideas by applying an analytical approach to understanding the clinical needs of physicians and users.

• Develop and execute a preclinical evaluation strategy in