Senior/Staff Systems Engineer
Neptune Medical · Burlingame, CA
$170,000–$220,000from the description
Jul 25, 2026
Burlingame, CA
Jul 26, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior technical role at a medical robotics startup, focused on designing and integrating the mechanical, electrical, and software systems of a flexible surgical robot. Day-to-day work spans framing solutions to open-ended engineering problems, prototyping in both hardware and software, testing integrated systems under clinical conditions, and contributing to risk analysis and product requirements. Suits an experienced robotics or electromechanical engineer comfortable working across disciplines in a fast-moving startup.
Senior level · 4+ years · San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA · Bachelor's required · Full-time
“or” means any one of them counts — you don't need all of them.
We read this from the posting text with AI. Skim the description below before ruling yourself out.
How this req sits in the market our data
Roughly 1,550 people in the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (computer occupations, all other). range 460–2,350
Applicant volume Heavy — This req sits in a large pool with little in its requirements to thin it, and auto-apply tools fire at everything in the occupation. Applying early and leading with the rare skills below is what gets read.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $165,256 (middle half $104,590–$211,000). This posting is about at that midpoint.
Estimated from BLS employment for this occupation and area, per-skill prevalence across our listing corpus, and published wage benchmarks — as of Jul 28, 2026. It is a model, not a headcount.
Why we read it this way (6)
The title reads 'Senior/Staff Systems Engineer' — the posting explicitly spans both levels. The experience range (4–12 years) and scope (technical leadership on a single product/system) best support Senior; Staff would typically imply cross-team or org-wide technical direction, which is not clearly described here.
SOC classification is a judgement call: Systems Engineer in a robotics/medical-device context sits between 15-1299 (Computer Occupations, All Other) and 15-1252 (Software Developers). The role spans hardware integration, kinematics, mechatronics, and software prototyping — no single SOC fits cleanly. 15-1299 is used as the primary code given the multi-disciplinary systems focus; 15-1252 is the runner-up given the software prototyping and embedded programming emphasis.
Python/MATLAB are listed as interchangeable options in the required qualifications ('Python or Matlab … or other programming language'); MATLAB is captured as an alternative.
C, C++, and Rust are listed together under Preferred as embedded/real-time programming options; each is emitted separately per the interchangeable-options rule, with the others as alternatives.
The experience range of 4–12 years is unusually wide; the overall years minimum is set to 4 (the stated minimum). The upper bound of 12 years reflects the Senior/Staff span the posting acknowledges.
Medical device regulatory experience (document control, design control, test protocols) and hospital/healthcare provider experience are listed under Preferred but name no specific technology or tool, so they are omitted from the skills list per the generic-concepts rule.
Read the full posting
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