Senior Principal Engineer - Imaging, Digital Solutions

About Abbott

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans diagnostics, medical devices, nutritionals, and branded generic medicines. Our 115,000 colleagues serve people in more than 160 countries.

Our medical devices help more than 10,000 people have healthier hearts, improve quality of life for thousands living with chronic pain and movement disorders, and liberate more than 500,000 people with diabetes from routine fingersticks.

Working at Abbott

• Career development with an international company.
• Free medical coverage in Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan.
• Excellent retirement savings plan with high employer contribution.
• Tuition reimbursement, Freedom 2 Save student debt program, and FreeU education benefit.
• Recognized as a great place to work globally and admired by Fortune.
• Recognized for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

The Opportunity

This Senior Principal Engineer - Imaging, Digital Solutions position is based in Santa Clara, CA.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and development of new and existing systems/products; define and improve engineering standards, processes, and procedures.
• Create requirements, specifications, and designs for medical devices in compliance with regulatory standards.
• Lead subsystem characterization, verification, and validation activities; design tests, analyze results, and document outcomes.
• Apply experimental, empirical, and simulation-based analyses to evaluate designs, mitigate risks, and ensure reliability.
• Develop test methods, simulation models, and technical documentation governing processes and procedures.
• Lead development of product specifications, FMEAs, DOEs, and V&V strategies; manage risk documentation and mitigation.
• Recommend and improve Design Control and quality processes per FDA guidelines.
• Apply advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis for complex system-level issues.
• Provide technical justification and drive resolution of complex design challenges.
• Establish technical leadership, identify program risks, and ensure execution to timelines and schedules.
• Drive process improvements to enhance engineering efficiency across teams.
• Develop products, processes, and design tools for cross-organizational use.
• Define and own architecture for medical image visualization systems, including 2D/3D/4D viewers and rendering pipelines.
• Lead design of high-performance 3D visualization and integration with backend systems.
• Establish best practices for rendering performance, GPU acceleration, and memory management.
• Drive technical decisions across visualization frameworks (OpenGL, Vulkan, WebGL, DirectX).
• Serve as subject-matter expert in DICOM formats, image data handling, and diagnostic visualization features.
• Ensure visualization workflows meet clinical, regulatory, and quality requirements.
• Drive system-level trade-offs across performance, scalability, latency, cost, and image quality.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or related field; or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 10 years of software engineering experience including 5+ years leading Imaging development and architecture.
• Background in medical image analysis (CT/MRI/echo), including 3D data processing, mesh handling, and geometric feature extraction.
• Experience with scientific and imaging frameworks such as NumPy, SciPy, PyTorch, and VTK.
• Deep understanding of algorithm optimization, numerical stability, and rigorous validation methodologies.
• Demonstrated success leading architecture and delivery for complex, scalable systems across cloud and/or edge environments.
• Demonstrated ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to cross-functional teams and leadership, and to influence decision-making across organizations.

Tools & Technologies

• Cloud: AWS, Azure, or GCP; serverless and containerized architectures.
• Orchestration & IaC: Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform.
• CI/CD & DevOps: GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps; automated testing and artifact management.
• Observability: Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry.
• Data & Streaming: Kafka, Spark/Databricks; event-driven architectures.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proven ability to introduce modern engineering practices that improve team velocity and delivery quality.
• Proficiency in software and system development tools such as MATLAB, Python, C++, VTK, and Qt/QML.
• Experience architecting both on-premises and cloud-based imaging solutions, including integration of AI/ML for computer vision and diagnostic applications.
• Experience working in regulated industries (e.g., healthcare); familiarity with software lifecycle and quality standards such as IEC 62304.
• Deep expertise in imaging modalities such as CT, ultrasound, MRI, or X-ray.
• Knowledge of regulatory and quality frameworks (e.g., FDA, ISO 13485, IEC 60601), including cybersecurity best practices.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with ability to influence across Product, Marketing, IT, Security, and Compliance.
• Practical experience with MLOps/LLMOps (model selection, fine-tuning, prompt engineering, evaluation, safety, and data governance).
• Track record of building platform capabilities (SDKs, templates, reference architectures) and enabling self-service for product teams.
• Experience managing third-party vendors and system integrators, including negotiating technical contracts.

Additional Information

• Job Family: Product Development
• Division: MD Medical Devices
• Location: United States > Santa Clara : Building B - SC
• Work Shift: Standard
• Travel: Yes, 10% of the time
• Medical Surveillance: Not Applicable
• Significant Work Activities: Continuous sitting for prolonged periods, Keyboard use >= 50% of the workday

Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer of Minorities/Women/Individuals with Disabilities/Protected Veterans.