User experience Jobs in Santa Clara, CA

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

Intuitive Surgical is seeking a Senior User Experience Product Writer to shape how users experience language across the da Vinci ecosystem. This role will define and guide the messaging, prompts, instructions, notifications, and content flows that help people confidently navigate our physical and digital products.

As an in-product writing architect, you will create a coherent voice across experiences that may span multiple products, platforms, and internal teams. You will help ensure that users encounter one clear and connected Intuitive experience - not the complexity of the organization behind it. This role calls for someone who is equally comfortable seeing the entire product ecosystem from a bird's-eye view and working deep in the details to ensure that every word, prompt, and interaction works in practice. You will be a persistent advocate for consistency, continuity, clarity, and user understanding.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and evolve the content strategy for user experiences across the physical and digital da Vinci product ecosystem.

• Architect end-to-end content flows, including prompts, system messages, notifications, instructions, confirmations, warnings, error states, onboarding, and guidance.

• Establish a consistent and recognizable in-product voice that helps users move confidently between products, platforms, and touchpoints.

• Translate complex system behavior, clinical workflows, and technical concepts into clear, concise, and actionable language.

• Ensure users experience Intuitive as one connected organization, regardless of which internal teams or business functions support a product.

• Develop and maintain content principles, voice and tone guidance, terminology standards, messaging frameworks, and reusable content patterns.

• Identify inconsistencies, gaps, and competing terminology across existing experiences and lead efforts to resolve them.

• Map content across complete user journeys to ensure continuity before, during, and after individual interactions.

• Partner closely with product designers, researchers, human factors specialists, engineers, product managers, clinical experts, regulatory partners, and other writers.

• Contribute to design systems by defining content standards and patterns that can scale across products and teams.

• Participate throughout the product development process - from early concept development and research through implementation, validation, and release.

• Use research, usability findings, product data, and stakeholder feedback to evaluate and improve content.

• Manage complex, cross-functional content initiatives while maintaining strong attention to detail, documentation, and follow-through.

• Advocate for content design as an essential part of product strategy, interaction design, usability, and the overall user experience.

• Balance strategic thinking with hands-on execution, ensuring that recommendations are reflected accurately in the final product.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• At least seven years of experience in UX writing, content design, product writing, content strategy, or a closely related discipline.

• Demonstrated experience creating content for complex physical, digital, or connected product ecosystems.

• A portfolio showing end-to-end user flows, content systems, interface writing, and the reasoning behind key content decisions.

• Experience developing or governing voice and tone, terminology, content standards, and reusable messaging patterns.

• Product management or project management experience, with the ability to lead work across multiple teams, dependencies, and timelines.

• Experience working in a creative studio environment, either in-house or at an agency.

• Exceptional writing, editing, information architecture, and verbal communication skills.

• Strong systems thinking, with the ability to understand how individual interactions contribute to a larger product experience.

• Meticulous organizational skills and the ability to manage detailed work without losing sight of broader user and business goals.

• Proven ability to build alignment among partners with different priorities, areas of expertise, and levels of familiarity with content design.

• Ability to work effectively in an iterative, highly collaborative product development environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience writing for healthcare, medical technology, safety-critical systems, robotics, enterprise software, or other regulated products.

• Familiarity with human factors, usability testing, accessibility, localization, and internationalization.

• Experience designing language for hardware interfaces and workflows that move between physical and digital touchpoints.

• Experience contributing to or governing a design system.

• Experience working with legal, regulatory, clinical, and risk-management partners.

• Familiarity with content prototyping and collaborative design tools.

What Success Looks Like

• Users encounter clear, consistent, and contextually appropriate language throughout the da Vinci ecosystem.

• Messaging and terminology remain coherent as users move between physical and digital products.

• Product teams have practical standards and reusable patterns that help them make better content decisions.

• Complex workflows become easier to understand and complete.

• Content issues are identified early, before they become usability or implementation problems.

• The final shipped experience reflects the intended content strategy - not just at the conceptual level, but in every meaningful detail.

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.

Intuitive is an Equal 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.

Mandatory Notices

U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer: In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.

Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government’s licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).

For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee’s start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes.

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

Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.

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.

Accommodation & Accessibility Notice:

Intuitive is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you require assistance or an accommodation during any part of the application or interview process, please contact People Services at HRHelpNow@intusurg.com.

Base Salary Range Region 1:$153,300 - $220,700
Base Salary Range Region 2: $130,300 - $187,600
Shift: Day
Workplace Type: Set Schedule - This job will be onsite weekly, the percentage of onsite work will be defined by the leader.