Sr. AI & Automation Engineer, Robotics

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

About the Team
The Future Forward organization is Intuitive's advanced concepts group. We explore emerging technologies, prototype next-generation solutions, and build software experiences that shape the future of robotic-assisted surgery. Our research team is building advanced augmented dexterity capabilities for next-generation robotic platforms.

The Role
Our researchers should spend their time on ideas, not on the manual work required to turn those ideas into results on real robots.

As a Senior AI & Automation Engineer, you will build the AI tools, automation systems, integrations, and evaluation capabilities that help researchers and engineers train, test, and evaluate models faster and make better decisions. You'll leverage existing AI technologies while developing new solutions, from agent-driven workflows and AI tooling to the APIs, services, and automation frameworks that support engineering and research activities.

That could mean agents that set up and run experiments, automation workflows that accelerate testing and evaluation, or tools that sort through logs and video to help teams understand failures and improve outcomes. It's a hands-on engineering role that uses AI to improve how physical AI systems are trained and tested. You'll automate that work; you won't design the models themselves. You'll work closely with ML researchers, simulation engineers, and robotics engineers.

What You'll Do
• Build and integrate AI tools, APIs, and agent workflows that automate engineering and research work across the team.
• Automate the training and fine-tuning workflow, from setting up experiments to launching, tracking, and comparing runs, so researchers can reproduce results without hand-built scripts.
• Build automation and integration workflows that help researchers and engineers evaluate new ideas in simulation and on real robots, quickly, reliably, and at scale.
• Design evaluations and experiments that show, with statistical confidence, whether a change is a real improvement.
• Build logging, analysis, and debugging tools that help the team understand results and failures, and that turn robot sessions into data the team can train on.
• Make what you build reliable, secure, and safe to run, with human approval where it matters and responsible use of AI throughout.
• Evaluate emerging AI tools, models, and technologies, and bring in the ones that deliver measurable impact.
• Measure the impact of what you build, document it clearly, and make successful tools part of how the team operates.

Qualifications

What You Bring
We care more about real depth in a few of these areas than shallow coverage of all of them.
• Hands-on work with real robots. You've built testing, automation, or evaluation systems that ran on real robot hardware or other physical systems via software interfaces, not only in the cloud or in simulation.
• AI and automation you've built and put into daily use. You've built LLM-agent workflows, AI tool integrations, copilots, or automation pipelines for real engineering work and measured whether they helped. Be ready to walk us through one: what it did, where it failed, and what you changed.
• Evaluation and experimental rigor. You know how to design experiments and understand the statistics needed to determine whether an improvement is real.
• Strong software engineering. You have 5+ years of software engineering experience.

You write production-quality Python, can read C++, and are comfortable with Linux, CI/CD, Docker, containerized services, APIs, and distributed systems.

Strong candidates often come from robotics, autonomous systems, physical AI, or robot- learning research, and have applied AI tooling to real hardware. You're comfortable working across disciplines in a fast-moving research environment and can explain trade-offs clearly to researchers and engineers alike.

If you don't check every box, we still want to hear from you.

Education
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Robotics, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical
Engineering, or a related technical field.
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) preferred.
Bonus Points
None of these are required. They're signals, not gates, and any one of them is a nice plus.
• Robotics simulation, such as NVIDIA Isaac Sim/Lab or MuJoCo
• Evaluating AI/ML, robotics, or robot-learning systems
• Surgical or medical robotics, including da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK) systems
• ROS 2 or other robot middleware
• Agent frameworks, tool integrations, or MCP servers adopted by engineering teams
• AI assistants, copilots, or productivity tools built for engineers or researchers
• AI applied to scientific, engineering, or research workflows

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.

Intuitive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, genetic information or any other status protected under federal, state, or local applicable laws.

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. 

We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with fair chance laws.

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:

Intuitive is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance or an accommodation during any part of the application or interview process, please contact People Services at [email protected].

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.