Senior Principal Engineer - Imaging, Digital Solutions

This Senior Principal Engineer - Imaging, Digital Solutions position can work out of our Santa Clara, CA location.

Responsible for independently leading the development and execution of new and existing products, processes, prototypes, fixtures, and tools. Serves as a recognized technical expert in design engineering, new product development, and design transfer, resolving complex technical challenges and driving continuous quality improvement.

Provides architectural leadership and integration for next-generation medical image visualization platforms, focusing on high-performance rendering, interactive image manipulation (zoom, pan, rotate, window/level, overlays), and DICOM-based workflows.

Drives innovation aligned to company goals, shapes long-term technical strategy, and mentors engineers across functions. Acts as a domain authority, ensuring cross-team alignment across imaging, platform, and clinical stakeholders to deliver impactful advancements in patient care.

What You'll Work On

• Leads design and development of new and existing systems/products; defines and improves engineering standards, processes, and procedures.
• Creates requirements, specifications, and designs for medical devices in compliance with regulatory standards.
• Leads subsystem characterization, verification, and validation activities; designs tests, analyzes results, and documents outcomes.
• Applies experimental, empirical, and simulation-based analyses to evaluate designs, mitigate risks, and ensure reliability.
• Develops test methods, simulation models, and technical documentation governing processes and procedures.
• Leads development of product specifications, FMEAs, DOEs, and V&V strategies; manages risk documentation and mitigation.
• Recommends and improves Design Control and quality processes in accordance with FDA guidelines.
• Applies advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis (RCA) for complex system-level issues.
• Provides technical justification and drives resolution of complex design challenges.
• Establishes technical leadership, identifies program risks, and ensures execution to timelines and schedules.
• Drives process improvements to enhance engineering efficiency across teams.
• Develops products, processes, and design tools for cross-organizational use.
• Defines and owns architecture for medical image visualization systems, including 2D/3D/4D viewers and rendering pipelines (web and device-based).
• Leads design of high-performance 3D visualization (volume rendering, MPR, zoom/pan/scroll, cine playback) and integration with backend systems.
• Establishes best practices for rendering performance, GPU acceleration, and memory management.
• Drives technical decisions across visualization frameworks (OpenGL, Vulkan, WebGL, DirectX, etc.).
• Serves as subject-matter expert in DICOM formats, image data handling, and diagnostic visualization features (window/level, LUTs, annotations, overlays).
• Ensures visualization workflows meet clinical, regulatory, and quality requirements.
• Drives system-level trade-offs across performance, scalability, latency, cost, and image quality.

• 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

• 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 the 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

Abbott is a global healthcare leader that helps people live more fully at all stages of life. Our portfolio of life-changing technologies spans the spectrum of healthcare, with leading businesses and products in 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 of people living with chronic pain and movement disorders, and liberate more than 500,000 people with diabetes from routine fingersticks. Working at Abbott At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and family, be your true self and live a full life. You'll also have access to: * Career development with an international company where you can grow the career you dream of. * Employees can qualify for free medical coverage in our Health Investment Plan (HIP) PPO medical plan in the next calendar year * An excellent retirement savings plan with high employer contribution * Tuition reimbursement, the Freedom 2 Save student debt program and FreeU education benefit - an affordable and convenient path to getting a bachelor's degree. * A company recognized as a great place to work in dozens of countries around the world and named one of the most admired companies in the world by Fortune. * A company that is recognized as one of the best big companies to work for as well as a best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists., Learn more about our health and wellness benefits, which provide the security to help you and your family live full lives: www.abbottbenefits.com Follow your career aspirations to Abbott for diverse opportunities with a company that can help you build your future and live your best life. Abbott is an Equal Opportunity Employer, committed to employee diversity. Connect with us at www.abbott.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/Abbott and on Twitter @AbbottNews and @AbbottGlobal The base pay for this position is $130,700.00 - $261,300.00