Senior R&D Engineer - Polymers Center of Excellence

About the role

Work Flexibility: Onsite

Advance Innovation That Improves Lives

At Stryker, we're driven to make healthcare better through cutting-edge engineering. As a Senior R&D Engineer within the Polymer Center of Excellence, you'll support the development, characterization, and optimization of polymer materials, coatings, and manufacturing processes that enable innovative medical device solutions for our Peripheral Vascular business. You'll apply your engineering knowledge through hands-on prototyping, testing, material characterization, and problem-solving while collaborating with cross-functional teams to advance products from concept through commercialization.

What You Will Do

• Support the development and expansion of Polymer Center of Excellence laboratory capabilities by identifying, evaluating, installing, and implementing equipment, fixtures, and processes for prototyping and material development.
• Assemble early-stage prototypes and components using small-scale polymer manufacturing processes to enable rapid design-build-test iterations across R&D programs.
• Research, develop, evaluate, and optimize polymer materials, coatings, and manufacturing processes for medical device applications with minimal supervision.
• Conduct rapid prototyping activities to evaluate new product concepts, materials, and processes and support development decisions.
• Plan and execute material characterization and testing, including mechanical, thermal, chemical, and surface analyses.
• Support root cause investigations related to material, coating, process, and product performance using analytical and data-driven problem-solving techniques.
• Evaluate polymer materials, coatings, and surface treatments based on design requirements, biocompatibility considerations, manufacturability, and performance needs.
• Design and execute experiments to better understand material behavior, process variability, and product performance using engineering and statistical principles.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with R&D, Quality, Manufacturing, Regulatory, and other partners to develop and transfer polymer and coating processes from concept through commercialization.
• Develop technical reports, test protocols, engineering documentation, and design recommendations to support engineering decisions, design controls, regulatory requirements, and knowledge sharing.
• Apply engineering principles to solve technical challenges related to materials, processes, prototypes, and product performance.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor of Science in Materials Science, Polymer Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related engineering or technical discipline.
• Minimum 2 years of professional, academic, or research experience working with polymer materials, polymer processing, polymer manufacturing, or polymer-based product development.
• Working knowledge of polymer material science, including polymer properties, material behavior, processing techniques, and their relationship to product or application performance.
• Hands-on experience supporting prototyping, manufacturing/process development, or fabrication activities involving polymer materials.
• Familiarity with material characterization techniques such as DSC, DMA, FTIR, SEM, surface characterization, and microscopy

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with polymer materials, coatings, materials engineering, and/or medical device product development.
• Hands-on experience with rapid prototyping, experimental design, development testing in laboratory/manufacturing environments.
• Experience evaluating or selecting materials based on mechanical properties, manufacturability, processing requirements, and product performance.
• Experience using engineering problem-solving methods to investigate material, process, or product performance issues.
• Familiarity with CAD software such as SolidWorks, Creo, AutoCAD, or equivalent.
• Ability to document technical work and communicate engineering findings and recommendations to cross-functional partners.

United States of America Pay Ranges

• US15: $89,400 - $148,900 USD Annual

Travel Percentage: 20%

Stryker Corporation will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant.

However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information.