Director NPI Service Manufacturing Operations

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 Position:

The Director of NPI Service Manufacturing Operations is responsible for establishing, scaling, and leading the end-to-end Service Manufacturing and MRO(Maintenance Repair & Overhaul) readiness operations that enable successful introduction, validation, and global transfer of new Field Replaceable Units (FRUs), failure analysis, repair processes, and service capabilities. This leader ensures that all new service products—across all Business Unites —Endoluminal, Multiport, Single Port, and emerging platforms—are fully operationalized and ready for deployment into the global service repair network.

Reporting to the Director NPI Manufacturing, this role oversees service build readiness, repair process development, technician capability, capacity planning, production execution, and quality compliance at the NPI site. The Director partners cross-functionally with R&D, Process Engineering, Product Operations, Demand/Supply Planning, Global MRO, Quality Engineering, Supply Chain, Training, Finance, and Field Service to ensure service manufacturing solutions meet cost, throughput, turnaround time, and reliability requirements prior to global ramp.

The ideal candidate is a decisive, systems-level operations leader who excels in complex cross-functional environments, can influence without authority, and demonstrates consistent execution, organizational maturity, and alignment with Intuitive’s leadership expectations.

Essential Job Duties:

1. NPI Service Manufacturing & MRO Readiness Leadership

Lead all NPI service manufacturing activities, ensuring repair readiness, process validation, and operational maturity for new FRUs and service products.

Own the transition from engineering builds to stable, repeatable repair processes capable of meeting volume, quality, and turnaround time requirements.

Define repair strategy, workflows, staffing plans, and the operational architecture required to support global repair deployment.

2. Cross-Functional Program Leadership

Serve as the primary service operations voice in cross-functional product teams for new platforms and FRUs.

Drive alignment with Engineering, R&D, Quality, and Supply Chain on repairability requirements, design-for-serviceability inputs, BOM accuracy, routings, tooling, and technician instructions.

Ensure readiness gates are met with high quality and predictable outcomes.

3. Workforce Development & Training Readiness

Develop organizational capability through hiring, coaching, and performance management of managers, supervisors, IE resources, training specialists, planners, and technicians.

Partner with Training to define certification plans, training capacity, and skill-mix requirements for new product support.

Build a culture of technical excellence, continuous improvement, and operational discipline.

4. Production Execution & Operational Performance

Oversee daily service manufacturing operations for NPI products, ensuring output meets build plans, quality standards, and cost targets.

Implement core operations systems including SIOP (Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning), capacity modeling, labor planning, takt modeling, earned hours vs. paid hours, and throughput optimization.

Ensure robust material availability, reverse logistics coordination, and service BOM accuracy.

5. Quality, Regulatory, and Compliance Ownership

Maintain compliance with regulatory standards, QMS requirements, documentation control, and service-related manufacturing processes.

Partner with Quality Engineering to ensure test methods, FA processes, and