Intuitive Surgical, Inc

Senior Software Engineer - Simulation & ML Platform

Intuitive Surgical, Inc$150K — $180K *
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, robotics, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years in software development for simulation, ML, robotics, or computer vision.
  • Proficient in Python and at least one other language (C++, Java, or TypeScript).
  • Experience with data-intensive applications and production-quality systems.
  • Strong understanding of API design and distributed systems fundamentals.

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain software infrastructure for robotic simulations & ML using advanced simulation environments.
  • Architect scalable pipelines for generating synthetic robotic interaction data, including development of APIs and command-line tools.
  • Create automated integration and validation pipelines for evolving simulation platforms to enhance compatibility and stability.
  • Develop AI-assisted workflows to optimize code maintainability and productivity across software projects.
  • Build tools for data scientists to define experiments easily, without platform code modification.
  • Develop secure, GPU-enabled containerized environments for simulation and data processing.
  • Collaborate with engineering teams to bridge gaps between simulation and physical robot interfaces.

Benefits

  • Market-competitive compensation packages including base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity.
  • Potential flexibility in job level based on candidate's qualifications.
  • Opportunities for professional development in an innovative environment.
Full Job Description
Job Description

Primary Function of Position

As a Senior Software Engineer - Simulation & ML Platform, you will build software platforms supporting simulation-based data generation and machine-learning development for robotic motion AI. You will work closely with Simulation Data Scientists and ML teams responsible for simulation strategy, synthetic-data design, action-model development, sim-to-real evaluation, and machine-learning experimentation. The Senior Software Engineer will translate those research and data-science requirements into reliable, scalable, and extendible software systems.

Responsibilities
  • Build and maintain software infrastructure for robotic simulations & ML using NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo or custom simulation environments.
  • Architect scalable pipelines for generating synthetic and procedurally varied robotic interaction data including development of APIs, configuration systems, command-line tools, and SDKs for defining and launching simulation workloads.
  • Build automated integration and validation pipelines for evolving simulation platforms, physics engines, and the NVIDIA AI ecosystem, enabling rapid adoption of new releases while maintaining compatibility, reproducibility, and stability across the robotics simulation software stack.
  • Develop AI-assisted engineering workflows for automated code refactoring, maintainability analysis, architectural consistency, and CI/CD optimization, enabling readable, modular, and sustainable codebases while improving engineering productivity across large-scale software projects.
  • Create reusable abstractions for robot configurations, tasks, sensors, scene assets, domain randomization, failure injection, data capture, episode termination, and evaluation.
  • Build tools that allow data scientists to define experiments without modifying low-level platform code. Support headless, interactive, local, cluster, and cloud-based execution.
  • Develop secure, GPU-enabled containerized environments for simulation, data processing, model inference, and experimentation. Develop common interfaces for robot state, coordinate frames, actions, trajectories, control commands, sensor observations, timing, and safety status.
  • Build tools for importing physical robot logs into analysis and simulation environments. Enable software-in-the-loop, hardware-in-the-loop, and controlled trajectory replay where appropriate.
  • Collaborate with controls, embedded, systems, and robotics engineers to manage differences between simulated and physical interfaces.
  • Establish standards for software development, testing, documentation, code review, release management, and operational ownership.


Qualifications

Required Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, computer engineering, robotics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
  • 5+ years of industry experience developing software for simulation, machine learning, robotics, computer vision, or autonomous-systems. Experience with high-volume image, video, time-series, or scientific data and formats such as Parquet, Zarr, or HDF5.
  • Strong proficiency in Python and at least one additional language such as C++, Java, or TypeScript.
  • Experience building data-intensive applications or data-processing pipelines. Experience designing and operating production-quality backend or platform systems. Experience with asynchronous processing, distributed workers, message queues, or event-driven architectures.
  • Strong understanding of API design, data modeling, concurrency, failure handling, and distributed-system fundamentals.
  • Experience with Docker, Linux, testing, observability, and production deployment.

Preferred Qualifications
  • Experience with NVIDIA Isaac Sim, Isaac Lab, MuJoCo, Gazebo, PhysX, or another robotics simulation platform. Familiarity with USD assets and scene composition.
  • Experience with coordinate transforms, robot kinematics, joint states, trajectory representations, sensor synchronization, or closed-loop control.
  • Experience with ROS or ROS 2 and GPU-enabled applications or infrastructure.
  • Experience with Redis, RabbitMQ, Kafka, Ray, Celery, Kubernetes, Slurm, or cloud batch systems.
  • Experience building scientific, engineering, ML, or internal developer tools.
  • Experience with PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, MLflow, or Weights & Biases.


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.

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.

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.

About Intuitive Surgical, Inc

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. is an American corporation that develops, manufactures, and markets robotic products designed to improve clinical outcomes of patients through minimally invasive surgery, most notably with the da Vinci Surgical System. The company is part of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500. Intuitive Surgical has installed more than 5,000 surgical systems worldwide, and has more than 4,000 employees.
Learn more about Intuitive Surgical, Inc
Size
9,793 employees
Market Cap
$93.6 billion
Industry
Net Income
$1 billion
Founded
1999
5 Year Trend
+16.1%
Revenue
$4.3 billion
NASDAQ

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