Staff Embedded Software Engineer Platform Networking (Automotive and Robotics)

The Embedded Platform Software team designs and builds the foundational software infrastructure for next-generation surgical robotic systems. We are looking for a high-energy, talented Staff Embedded Software Engineer to join the Embedded Networking Software team, within the Multiport Platform Software group. If you’ve built in-vehicle networks, automotive middleware, or real-time robot communication stacks, your experience translates directly to what we do.

We are a small group that works in a focused, high-energy environment working on New Product Development. We believe in applying first principles thinking, data driven decision making, continuous learning, and systematic planning to deliver results and achieve our goals.

• Are you passionate about technology?
• Do you want to have a direct impact on helping people live better lives?
• Are you interested in the medical applications of robotics?
• Do you like building deterministic, distributed systems, like zonal vehicle networks or multi-node robot control stacks?
• Does working in a multidisciplinary, systems-oriented design team sound exciting?

Your Role

You will be a technical leader on the team developing our flagship product, dV5. The team's focus is to enhance and extend the dV5 robotic embedded network across Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) layers 1–5, with a focus on PHYs, MACs, Ethernet switches, and the drivers that tie them together, and apply that deep understanding to new surgical robotic systems. The challenges will feel familiar to anyone who has built vehicle or robot networks: mixed-criticality traffic, precise time synchronization, and safety-critical determinism. You will own the architecture, set the multi-year technical direction, and grow the engineers around you.

Your Responsibilities

In your first year in this role, you will:

• Design, develop, and deliver features architectures across the embedded network stack and help define the technical roadmap across:

• Reliability, including redundancy and fault tolerance strategies
• Performance architecture for growing data transfer needs: low latency switching, traffic shaping, queue management

• Own the architecture and development of Ethernet MAC, PHY, and switch drivers (Linux and RTOS), including bring-up on new silicon and boards
• Define and implement automotive Ethernet switch configuration: VLANs, QoS/priority mapping, ACLs/filtering, port mirroring, and static/dynamic forwarding tables
• Implement and tune TSN features in switch hardware and drivers for safety-critical deterministic traffic
• Set the technical direction and standards for Layer 2/Layer 3 software, Ethernet MAC and PHY drivers, and deterministic real-time paths for safety critical data, applying queueing theory
• Lead design and code reviews, mentor senior and mid-level engineers, and raise the bar on design quality and debugging rigor while staying hands-on in the highest-risk code
• Serve as the technical authority on hardware integration, and lead escalations on the hardest hardware-software networking failures (JTAG, GDB, protocol analyzers)
• Drive alignment across cross functional teams such as FPGA, Electrical (board bring-up and signal integrity), Application Development, Algorithms, Clinical, and Manufacturing to negotiate requirements and resolve architectural tradeoffs
• Influence build-versus-buy and Ethernet switch/PHY silicon selection, working directly with vendors, and make the case for investments that retire technical debt