Staff Software Engineer, Valence
Alphatec Spine · Carlsbad, CA
$130,000–$145,000from the description
Jul 6, 2026
Carlsbad, CA
Jul 20, 2026
What this job asks for AI summary
A senior individual contributor role focused on building intra-operative spine surgical navigation and robotics software. Day-to-day work centers on C++ application development in a Linux environment, software architecture decisions, and driving a product through FDA 510(k) clearance, with some cadaveric lab testing and occasional OR attendance. Suits an engineer with deep surgical navigation experience and strong grounding in 3D geometry, medical imaging, and IEC 62304-regulated development.
Senior level · 8+ years · Carlsbad, CA · Full-time
Advertised as Staff, but the requirements read as Senior.
“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 230 people in the Carlsbad, CA area plausibly meet what this posting asks for (software developers). range 50–350
Applicant volume Moderate — A normal amount of company. The rare requirements below are what will separate a shortlisted application from the rest.
Rare in this occupation — lead with these, and say what you built with them.
Most people in this occupation already list these. Still required — just not what gets you shortlisted.
What the occupation pays Median $166,860 (middle half $131,418–$198,246). 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 (8)
The title is 'Staff Software Engineer' but the actual scope — technical leadership of a single product area (intra-op spine navigation), mentoring junior engineers, and 8+ years of experience — aligns with a Senior individual contributor rather than a true Staff-level role with cross-team technical authority. Seniority is assessed as Senior accordingly.
The degree requirement ('BS/MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field') is stated as 'preferred', so no minimum degree is hard-gated.
VTK, ITK, and OpenCV are listed together as a single 'experience with image processing and rendering toolkits such as…' requirement; VTK is used as the primary name with ITK and OpenCV as alternatives since the posting treats them interchangeably.
Qt framework is explicitly called 'a plus' and camera calibration familiarity is also called 'a plus' — both are listed as preferred.
3D spatial geometry (coordinate transforms, linear algebra, registration) and DICOM/volumetric imaging fluency are listed in the requirements section with firm language and are treated as hard gates, even though they are domain knowledge rather than named tools.
Location is inferred as Carlsbad, CA (ATEC Spine's headquarters); the posting does not explicitly state a city but the company is headquartered there. No remote option is mentioned.
Surgical navigation experience is described as 'highly desired' rather than required, but the 8+ years requirement is specifically tied to 'surgical navigation or equivalent medical device products', making domain experience effectively a hard gate at the role level.
Ignored 1 non-technology phrase(s) as skills (responsibilities/concepts, not named tools): 2D-to-3D image registration.
Read the full posting
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