Senior Software Engineer – Tools and Infrastructure

Reports to: Head of Robotics

Workplace Type: Hybrid

Overview

Capstan Medical: Creating a new standard for minimally invasive structural heart treatment

At Capstan Medical, we’re driven by an unwavering commitment to transforming the treatment of heart valve disease. By merging surgical robotics with catheter-based technology and next generation implants, we’ve pioneered a patient-optimized approach to repair and replace heart valves.

Our innovative technology offers a significantly less invasive alternative to traditional open-heart surgery while ensuring precise and reliable placement of the heart valve implant. With these advancements, we may be able to provide patients with a solution to their heart valve disease while significantly reducing recovery time and minimizing the risk of complications. With a dedicated team of heart valve device experts and robotics engineers, we are fully committed to developing a comprehensive and transformative solution that will positively impact the lives of individuals affected by this condition.

Capstan Medical is uniquely positioned in Santa Cruz. This gives us access to the amazing technical talent of the Bay Area, but in an environment that we feel is conducive to doing our best creative work. Our office is adjacent to large tracts of open space with bicycle trails straight from the office doors offering access to the hills and beaches of Wilder Ranch State Park for road/mountain bicycle riding, hiking, and surfing.

Come join us and become part of a team revolutionizing heart valve treatment!

Description

We’re looking for a Senior Software Engineer focused on Tools and Infrastructure to help supercharge the engineering workflows across the team. This role blends software engineering with DevOps and internal tooling, ensuring developers can prototype, test, and ship faster with less friction. As a small, high-impact team writing software for medical robotics, we need someone who thrives on enabling others. You’ll lead efforts to update our development environments, streamline build/test workflows, and scaleup the systems that support both R&D and manufacturing. You’ll own and improve systems that span developer experience, CI/CD pipelines, system administration, test automation, and development environments. This includes writing Python and C++ tools, architecting and improving our internal build/test infrastructure, and helping to automate and secure the environments where our code runs—from R&D through manufacturing and validation. This role is ideal for someone who enjoys solving meta-problems: making other engineers faster, reducing manual errors, automating the repetitive tasks, and making debugging and testing more efficient. In a small team, this is also an opportunity to flex into adjacent domains like general ROS2 development or cloud infrastructure, depending on interest and evolving needs.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain internal Python and C++ tools that accelerate developer workflows, CI automation, and robot test infrastructure.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and build systems (e.g., CMake, colcon, GitLab CI).
• Support Linux system administration tasks including system upgrades (e.g., Ubuntu 22.04 → 24.04), network configuration, and computer provisioning. Maintain an automated provisioning that enables developers to easily provision systems with a consistent configuration.
• Help manufacturing and R&D teams by designing tools for automated test execution, data capture, and debugging.
• Define and document development environment standards, Docker-based toolchains, and onboarding guides. Own the development tool chain and set a vision for what good looks like within the team.
• Collaborate with software, hardware, and manufacturing teams to identify friction points in the development pipeline and build solutions to eliminate them.
• Be proactive about maintaining a clean, secure, and high-performance development ecosystem.
• Ensure traceability across software/hardware in regulated systems. Contribute to cybersecurity posture (hardening Linux images, scanning containers, etc.).
• Champion reproducibility and traceability across the stack, ensuring every artifact (build, config, test result) can be tied back to source and version.
• Flex into adjacent software areas (e.g., general ROS2 development, application software and architecture, cloud-based data pipelines, etc.) as team needs and interests align.
  
  

Skills & Experience

• Proficient in Python and C++ with strong software engineering fundamentals.
• Experience with Linux development environments, build systems (e.g. CMake), and tools like Ansible, Docker, and Git.
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD systems such as GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.
• Comfortable with system administration: package management, OS upgrades, service configuration, and debugging.
• Experience writing developer-facing tools (e.g. linters, CLI utilities, build helpers, test wrappers).
• Strong debugging and troubleshooting skills across complex software/hardware environments.
• Excellent communicator, both verbal and written—able to write clean documentation and onboard others effectively.
• Experience working in a regulated or safety critical industry.
• Preferred: Background in shipping medical device SW and designing to the FDA cybersecurity guidance.
• Bonus: Familiarity with test automation and frameworks for hardware-in-the-loop or integration testing.
• Bonus: Familiarity with ROS2 development and tooling.
• Bonus: Experience building cloud-based infrastructure (e.g., S3 pipelines, telemetry tools, or deployment orchestration).
  
  

Requirements

• BS+ in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field—or equivalent hands-on experience.
• 5+ years of experience in infrastructure, tooling, DevOps, or full-stack engineering with a systems focus.
• Prior experience in a fast-paced R&D environment or early-stage product development strongly preferred.
• Comfortable working with ambiguity and translating vague needs into concrete, maintainable systems.
• Ability to work in a hybrid work environment, working onsite in Santa Cruz on average 2-3 days a week.
  
  

We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, and disability, or other legally protected status.