Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Intuitive Surgical
Sunnyvale, CA, US2026-04-07Full-time

About the job

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. The person in this position will be expected to work with a cross-functional team to develop real-time intraoperative intelligence software for minimally invasive robotics system, to improve the surgical efficiency and clinical outcome for patients. Successful candidates will have experience in algorithm development, software design and development. The ideal candidate is an independent and fast-paced developer with excellent problem-solving skills and a passion for good software architectures and processes, capable of producing robust, high-quality code in the face of rapidly changing requirements.

Responsibilities

Participating in the full cycle of the development of intraoperative surgical software

Understanding clinical requirements and developing technical specifications

Designing, prototyping, and implementing user-facing software and computer vision / machine learning algorithms

Iterating with user feedback and delivering production-ready code

Supporting system integration and testing

Generating formal design documentation

Preparing and review patent applications

Contributing to system and software architecture

Staying up-to-date with the latest model architectures and development trends and technologies, and proposing innovative solutions to enhance our software algorithms

Qualifications

Minimum

Minimum Master's degree or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related fields

Deep understanding and hands-on experience in computer vision, and machine learning algorithm development

Knowledge and experience in one or more of the following areas: image segmentation / registration / reconstruction

Software development experience using C++ or Python, and experience with OOP design

Familiar with one or more tools and libraries: OpenCV, PyTorch / TensorFlow, ITK / VTK

Strong verbal and written communication skills

High levels of independence and technical ownership

Preferred

Proficiency in GPU programming such as CUDA

Experience with software development process in a regulated medical device environment

Knowledge and experience in camera pose estimation / SLAM