Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Job description

T he AI Engineering group within Intuitive Surgical has an immediate opening in Sunnyvale, CA for a Senior Machine Learning Engineer with focus on Computer Vision, Deep Learning, Generative AI and Robotics, contributing to new technology development for next-generation robot-assisted surgery platforms. This role is an exciting opportunity to join a newly formed team and contribute to its growth and it will give you an opportunity to test your knowledge in a challenging problem-solving environment.

The successful candidate must excel in a high-energy, focused, small-team environment, be able to initiate and drive new research directions, and have a commitment to high research quality. A strong sense of shared responsibility and shared reward is required.

Primary Function of Position

• Lead the research, design, and implementation of AI algorithms for computer vision (image and video analysis), multimodal data, and action models
• Contribute to surgical AI and robotics pipelines; integrate, test, and evaluate accuracy bottlenecks of vision action (VA), and vision language action (VLA) models
• Lead development of effective techniques and infrastructure, from the initial idea to the running prototype and product.

Contribute to research projects that develop a variety of algorithms and systems in computer vision, robotics, and multi-modal data fusion. Advance the state-of-the-art in the field, including generating patents and publications. Develop validation methods, datasets, pipelines, and evaluation metrics to show scalability to large clinical datasets. Participate in integration of new ML/CV algorithms into existing and future robotic platforms.

Collaborate with users and clinical advisors to iterate prototype designs based on feedback and performance. Develop new technologies and digital products to improve surgeon and team performance on robotic surgery platforms. Support academic collaborations in related fields.

Qualifications

Required Education, Skills & Experience

• Master's degree with minimum of 6 years industry experience developing computer vision and machine learning applications; or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering or related field and minimum of 3 years of experience
• Strong understanding and experience in building effective learning systems (data collection, training, evaluation, and making iterative improvements).

Strong publication track record in conferences like CVPR, ICCV, MICCAI, etc. Strong hands-on experience with at least one of the mainstream deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow or PyTorch. Strong hands-on experience with Python (proficiency), C/C++ (proficiency), shell scripting Familiarity with control systems, robotics, kinematics, and dynamics. Strong engineering practices, debugging/profiling skills, familiarity with multi-threaded programming.

Strong hands-on experience with GPU accelerated algorithms and implementations. Strong hands-on experience with state-of-the-art AI models, VFMs, or vision action models. Excellent communication skills both written and verbal. Interested in early phases of product exploration and iteration based on incomplete requirements. Solid understanding of computer vision, machine learning, generative models, and deep learning. Experience with visualization tools is a plus.

Self-starter and able to work in a collaborative and results-oriented environment. Ability to travel domestically and internationally (5-15%) Able to view live and recorded surgical procedures.