ML Engineer

Job Description

Primary Function of Position:

As a highly collaborative organization, our data engineers work cross-functionally with software engineering, data science, and product management to optimize growth, strategy, and experience for our users, as well as our internal employee community. You will be a part of a small team working on high impact tasks with multiple stakeholders.  You’ll take the lead on ‘ML Engineering’, defining and delivering the architecture, design, tools, and infrastructure that will make ML Engineering at Intuitive Surgical secure, simple, and effective. You’ll need to strike a balance between flexibility for different users and the need for standards and best practices; and find ways to make the platform responsive to changing requirements and emerging capabilities. You’ll keep up with the latest relevant technologies, participate in user and special interest groups, and understand trends and opportunities.

Key Roles and Responsibilities:

In this role, you'll have a unique opportunity to solve some of the most interesting data challenges around privacy, efficiency, and integrity, at scale. As a ML Engineer, you are adaptable and a flexible problem solver with an algorithmic approach, technical expertise, engineering & analytics skills, and product sense to successfully pivot/context-switch amongst many projects with a variety of scale and complexity. With your breadth of knowledge, you are often sought after for guidance and mentorship as well.

Your core responsibilities include:

• Identifying opportunities to improve how we do Machine Learning
• Creating content and events to support Machine Learning knowledge-sharing and storytelling inside and outside of Intuitive Surgical
• Building tools, accelerators and frameworks for Data Scientists & Machine Learning Engineers
• Ensuring that we use data responsibly and in accordance with Intuitive Surgical’s values
• Conceptualize and own the Data Architecture for multiple large-scale projects, while evaluating design and operational cost-benefit tradeoffs within systems.
• Collaborate with Engineers, Product Managers, Data Scientists, and Security to understand and cater to data needs securely and efficiently.
• Define and manage SLA for all data sets in allocated areas of ownership.
• Determine and implement the security model based on privacy requirements, confirm safeguards are followed, address data quality issues, and evolve governance processes within allocated areas of ownership.
• Solve our most challenging data integration problems, utilizing optimal ETL patterns, frameworks, query techniques, sourcing from structured and unstructured data sources.
• Assist in owning existing processes running in production, optimizing complex code through advanced algorithmic concepts.
• Optimize pipelines, dashboards, frameworks, and systems to facilitate easier development of data artifacts.
• Influence product and cross-functional teams to identify data opportunities to drive impact.
• Keep current with Data Engineering & Cloud Architecture tools, frameworks, and design patterns. 
• Ensuring that we use data responsibly and in accordance with Intuitive Surgical’s values

Qualifications

Education

• Minimum BS/BA in Technical Field, Computer Science or Mathematics with 6 years of relevant work experience
• Minimum MS/MA in Data Science, Computer Science or Mathematics with 3 years of relevant work experience

Skills & Experience

Must Haves:

• Minimum three or more years of relevant software engineering experience with proficiency in Python in a data-focused role
• Solid understanding and experience of Machine Learning through its full life cycle
• Solid understanding of Machine Learning Frameworks (Tensorflow, PyTorch, scikit-learn,..)
• Solid understanding of Data Structures & Algorithms
• 1 years experience with Kubernetes & Docker
• Strong expertise in Dockerizing ML Applications
• Strong expertise in Deploying CI/CD Pipelines
• Prior experience building scalable data solutions in the cloud, preferably AWS
• Good understanding of networking and security protocols, both on-premise and cloud
• Proactive problem-solving ability, comfortable with ambiguity
• Great storytelling ability, who can tailor content and complexity to their audiences
• Ability to readily build productive alliances and manage complex stakeholder relationships
• Minimum 3 years experience in Python and/or C#
• Minimum 3 years experience in OOP languages
• Minimum 3 years experience in writing SQL statements
• Minimum 3 years experience in ETL design, implementation, and maintenance
• Minimum 3 years experience in distributed systems and databases
• Comfortable working with any flavor of Linux
• Excellent written and communication skills

Nice To Haves:

• 2 years experience in Kubernetes.  CKAD and/or CKA certification desired.
• 2 years hands on experience in Cloud Deployment.  Adept in containers and serverless technologies. 
• Has through understanding of Cloud Security model.
• Prior MLOps experience using popular MLOps frameworks like Kubeflow, MLFlow, Pachyderm, Flyte, Michelangelo…)
• Hands-on experience of MLOps Processes (Distributed Training, Model Evaluation, Hyper Parameter Optimization, Model Performance Visualization, Inference, Model Serving, Model Version Control, Data Version Control,..)
• Experience in at least one NoSQL database (Ex. Elasticsearch, MongoDB…)
• Experience in at least one MPP database (Ex. Snowflake, Vertica…)
• Experience in at least one Columnar database (Ex. Snowflake, Vertica…)
• Experience in at least one Time-Series database (Ex. Druid, InfluxDB…)
• Experience in at least one Event-Streaming platform (Ex. Kafka, RabbitMQ…)
• Experience in at least one modern Workflow Management platform (Ex. Airflow, Argo…)
• Good understanding of authentication protocols (Ex. OAuth2, SAML, OIDC...)
• Good understanding of Data Privacy Laws (Ex. HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR…)
• High-Level understanding of Machine Learning Frameworks & Life Cycle
• CI/CD pipeline and Build tools such as Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab etc.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

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 Employment 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.

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