Supplier Engineer

Position: Staff Supplier Engineer
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

Primary Function of Position

The ideal candidate possesses in-depth experience, both conceptual and hands-on, in metal machining, manufacturing processes for tooled parts (metal casting and plastic injection-molding), and additive manufacturing. In addition, this candidate has the skills and experience to assess, select, and develop optimal supplier partners in these processes and commodities while mentoring and developing our team.

In addition, the ideal candidate possesses a solutions-oriented approach to use critical-thinking and their engineering experience to help solve challenges faced by our cross-functional teammates in Design Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, and Quality Engineering.

This position has both Sustaining and NPI responsibilities listed below.

Sustaining Responsibilities:

• As an expert in supplier engineering, develop resolution to critical issues and broad design matters affecting departmental and cross-functional projects and teams.
• Serve as a technical advisor to senior leaders.
• Expertly translate complex technical problems into solutions.
• Work diligently and relentlessly with suppliers to build and own a vision to improve delivery, quality, cost, and capacity by identifying risks and appropriate mitigations.
• Plan and execute supplier change projects affecting a combination of supply continuity, quality, cost, capacity, and supply chain risk management that include manufacturing and inspection process changes, capacity optimization, facility changes, and new equipment qualifications.
• Drive suppliers to continually improve their business and manufacturing processes with an eye on supplier scorecard performance, and to meet Intuitive's requirements by using a collection of best practices in project management, SPC, and negotiation by leading these independently.
• Investigate, analyze, close, and prevent recurrence of variance requests for purchased components from suppliers.
• Monitor supplier performance and initiate improvement activities, including the ownership of CAPAs for supplier variances from symptom through root cause analysis, to corrective action, and preventive action.
• Drive changes to Intuitive requirements with occasional engineering calculations, Solid Works assembly review, and initiating and managing changes to specifications and drawings through the change order process.
• Complete project and part qualification deliverables including Process FMEA, Process Capability Analysis, FAIR, Process Validations, and Gage R&R.

NPI Responsibilities:

• Understand the state-of-art in your components' manufacturing technologies and processes.
• Lead Design for Manufacturability (DFM) activities by engaging the cross-functional engineering team and suppliers early in the development cycle to obtain valuable feedback on manufacturability, opportunities for improved assembly at Intuitive, and design improvements prior to production.
• Select the correct manufacturing process and supplier for the part, considering metrics such as long-term fit with Intuitive, commodity specialization, capacity, and total cost of ownership.
• Develop supplier production readiness based on forecast, supplier capacity, quality performance, and process capability.
• Complete project and part qualification deliverables including:
  Process FMEA, Process Capability Analysis, FAIR, Process Validations, and Gage R&R.

Qualifications

Required Education, Skills, Experience

• Bachelor's with at least 12 year or Master's Engineering Degree with at least 8 years or relevant experience in engineering and manufacturing of machined metal parts, tooled parts (metal casting and plastic injection-molding), and additive parts.
• Strong and persistent curiosity for solving technical problems in component manufacturing, testing, and inspection.
• Experience with a wide range of manufacturing processes, including understanding of key input variables for quality, cost, and capacity.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, which will be tested regularly when interacting with…