Staff Software Engineer

About the role

Primary Function of Position

The Staff Software Engineer will lead the design and evolution of a modern, scalable Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platform that supports Intuitive Digital products and enables more than 2,000 engineers across the organization. This role is responsible for owning and advancing critical components of our real-time and micro-batch data pipelines that power product development, internal tools, and analytics.

The engineer will provide architectural direction, influence cross-team data standards, ensure reliability and performance at scale, and drive strategic initiatives that improve developer productivity and data accessibility across the organization.

Major work will focus on enabling high-throughput, low-latency data delivery through streaming pipelines, dynamic transformations, and APIs, driving application development, AI/ML, and actionable insights. You will help define the architecture and engineering practices that support self-service analytics and operational decision-making on scale.

Essential Job Duties

• Build highly scalable distributed systems that leverage event-based and streaming data pipelines to handle ingestion and processing of robot, manufacturing, and clinical data
• Enable users by providing self-service APIs and applications to access and interact with data
• Work closely with core engineering teams to consistently evolve data models based on growing business needs
• Apply and evangelize software development best practices such as CI/CD, automated testing, infrastructure-as-code, and microservice architectures
• Effectively participate in the team's planning, code reviews, KPI reviews, and design discussions leading to continuous improvement in these areas.
• Act as a technical leader within the data domain driving best practices, mentoring teammates, and continuously improving how data is produced, shared, and consumed across the organization

Required Skills and Experience

• Fluent coding with at least two of the following: Python, Go, Scala, Java, C++
• Proven experience building data pipelines and working with distributed systems using technologies like Apache Spark, Kafka, Elasticsearch, Snowflake, and Airflow
• Deep technical knowledge & experience with Data Platform components/design patterns:Event-Driven Pipelines (e.g. AWS Lambda)Message Queues (e.g. Kafka)Container Orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes) Stream Processing (e.g. Flink, Spark) Relational Databases (e.g. Postgres)Data Warehouses (e.g. Snowflake)Analytics Engineering (e.g. DBT)Workflow Orchestration (e.g. Airflow)Search Engines (e.g. Elasticsearch)
• Strong understanding of CI/CD workflows, unit testing and integration testing, and deployment patterns.
• Experience with AWS and/or GCP
• Experience with SQL and relational databases

Additional information

Ability and enthusiasm to work collaboratively and cross-functionally, and take end-to-end ownership to deliver results for customers

Required Education and Training

Solid quantitative background in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or 8-10+ years of hands-on experience in a technically demanding role. Minimum a bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience on a Platform team
• Experience with Gitlab CI/CD or other CI tooling
• Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Packer + general IaC best practices
• You're familiar with CNCF projects and have successfully used them in the past
• Ph.D. in computer science, mathematics, or a related field

Additional Information

Due to the nature of our business and the role, please note that Intuitive and/or your customer(s) may require that you show current proof of vaccination against certain diseases including COVID-19. Details can vary by role.

Mandatory Notices

U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer: In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.

Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government's licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan ("TCP") (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).

For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee's start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes.

Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

This position may be filled at a different job level than listed here depending on business need and/or on the selected candidate's experience, knowledge and skills.

Compensation will be based primarily on the job level at which the role is filled and the candidate's qualifications, consistent with applicable law.

Accommodation & Accessibility Notice

We provide market-competitive compensation packages, inclusive of base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of range for the role, as actual pay will be determined based on several factors, including experience, skills, and qualifications. The target compensation ranges are listed.