Primary Function of Position
The Software Build team at Intuitive is seeking a hands-on Staff Software Engineer to design, build, and operate the next-generation unified build system across all robotic surgery platforms.
This role is for an experienced engineer who writes code, debugs real build failures, prototypes infrastructure, and scales systems through direct technical contribution. You will own core build architecture while remaining deeply involved in implementation—driving measurable improvements in build speed, correctness, and developer productivity across large, safety-critical C/C++ codebases.
You will serve as a technical leader and mentor, but this is not an oversight-only role. Expect to spend significant time designing build rules, implementing tooling, debugging distributed builds, and evolving CI infrastructure in production.
Responsibilities
- Design, implement, and maintain Bazel-based build systems for large-scale C/C++ embedded software, including custom toolchains and cross-compilation flows.
- Directly implement and optimize Bazel Remote Caching and Remote Execution (RBE) to enable fast, deterministic builds across local, CI, and cloud environments.
- Write production code in Rust, C/C++, and Python to support build tooling, infrastructure services, and developer workflows.
- Own and evolve build performance: cache hit rates, execution parallelism, dependency hygiene, hermeticity, and reproducibility.
- Build and maintain developer-facing tooling that improves local iteration speed and CI reliability.
- Integrate and operate build infrastructure across on-premises and cloud environments, balancing performance, security, and cost.
- Work directly with firmware, platform, and application teams to debug real-world build issues and eliminate systemic bottlenecks.
- Improve observability of build systems through metrics, logging, and analytics.
- Mentor engineers through code reviews, architectural discussions, and hands-on problem solving.
- Act as a technical advocate for modern build practices and scalable development workflows.
Sunnyvale, CA, USA On-site Full-time USD 300 – 322 / month