Platform Software Development Manager

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

Joining Intuitive Surgical means joining a team dedicated to using technology to benefit patients by improving surgical efficacy and decreasing surgical invasiveness, with patient safety as our highest priority. We work in a high-energy, focused, small-team environment, and believe in applying first principle thinking, data-driven decision making, continuous learning, systematic planning to deliver results and achieving our goals.

Primary Function of Position:

As part of the Future Forward organization, the Software Development Manager will have the responsibility to lead the embedded software team in building and improving the embedded software at the heart of an early-stage robotic surgical platform. The team has broad responsibility on the software infrastructure and architecture of the entire system, with a focus on the safe and reliable operation of each node, on the communication interfaces, and all system aspects that derive from it.

The successful candidate must excel in a high-energy small, focused team environment, be able to drive to solutions from rough requirements and methodical prototype iterations and have a commitment to high product quality that places patients first.

Quick learning and a desire to understand requirements from a user’s and engineering’s perspective are essential to become a valuable leader. A strong sense of shared responsibility and shared reward is required, as is the ability to make work fun and interesting. Supporting you will be a development and management team that knows and cares about what you are doing and wants you to succeed.

Essential Job Duties

• Own full development lifecycle for embedded software team and associated documentation (negotiate requirements, systematic risk assessment and mitigation, prototyping, development, testing, and software releases).
• Champion best practices in software development (e.g., code reviews, scrums, bug scrubbing meetings, coding conventions, continuous integration, defensive programming, static analysis, design patterns).
• Drive technical development across a variety of areas ranging from board bring up, inter-node communication protocols, OS management, cybersecurity, and safety algorithms.
• Interface with a multitude of technical and product teams, understanding embedded software needs in order to create, maintain, and track a bottom-up schedule that best support top-down goals.
• Recognize and attract top talent, mentor and train existing team members and new hires through one-on-one coaching as well as team wide initiatives.

Qualifications

Required Education and Training

• Bachelor’s degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering, or similar technical field.
• Advanced degree preferred.
• A minimum of 8 years of experience in developing and supporting embedded systems (or 6 years with a Master’s degree, or 3 years with a PhD degree).
• A minimum of 3 years as people manager or prior management responsibilities through project management or team leadership efforts.

Required Skills and Experience

• Extensive experience creating, presenting, and refining clear, compelling technical specifications from top-level system architecture documents down to low-level implementation guides and test plans.
• In-depth experience working with embedded systems and safety-critical, complex electromechanical systems, including failure mode and risk analysis.
• Extensive experience planning and executing complex software deliverables on tight deadline and with interdependencies with hardware development.
• Experience in all phases of the product development lifecycle including design, implementation, debug, verification, validation, and transfer to manufacturing.
• Strong problem-solving skills and debugg