Company Description
It started with a simple idea: what if surgery could be less invasive and recovery less painful? Nearly 30 years later, that question still fuels everything we do at Intuitive. As a global leader in robotic-assisted surgery and minimally invasive care, our technologies—like the da Vinci surgical system and Ion—have transformed how care is delivered for millions of patients worldwide.
We’re a team of engineers, clinicians, and innovators united by one purpose: to make surgery smarter, safer, and more human. Every day, our work helps care teams perform with greater precision and patients recover faster, improving outcomes around the world.
The problems we solve demand creativity, rigor, and collaboration. The work is challenging, but deeply meaningful—because every improvement we make has the potential to change a life.
If you’re ready to contribute to something bigger than yourself and help transform the future of healthcare, you’ll find your purpose here.
Job Description
Job Description
Primary Function of Position We are seeking a strategic privacy compliance and operations individual contributor to help shape and scale Intuitive’s global privacy program. This role partners across all business teams to implement priorities, drive enterprise privacy initiatives, and translate privacy requirements into scalable processes, controls, and governance. The ideal candidate brings strong project leadership, risk management, and operational excellence, and is comfortable working in a fast-paced, regulated environment. This role will help implement the roadmap for privacy compliance operations, strengthen governance and assessment models, and elevate the program’s overall maturity and business impact.
The Privacy Compliance & Operations reports to the Senior Director of Privacy Compliance & Operations and is a function of the global Privacy team within the Legal department, and partners with IT and product security, product managers, procurement, and all other business teams to operationalize privacy requirements through effective governance, assessments, documentation, training, and monitoring to enable compliant, trustworthy, and responsible data use across Intuitive’s business processes, products, and systems.
This role will act as a privacy compliance and operations professional responsible for implementing legal and regulatory requirements into practical processes and controls, managing cross-functional initiatives, supporting audit and regulatory readiness, and reducing privacy risk through scalable compliance operations and strong stakeholder engagement.
Essential Job Duties
Partner with cross functional, global business stakeholders to operationalize privacy requirements.
Lead privacy assessments, including DPIAs/PIAs, data transfer reviews, and risk reviews for products, systems, vendors, and business initiatives.
Identify privacy risks, assess control gaps, and drive remediation with business, legal, and technical teams.
Implement cross-functional privacy initiatives from strategy and roadmap development through execution, tracking, and executive reporting.
Maintain key privacy program documentation, including RoPA, SOPs, decision logs, evidence repositories, and related records.
Partner with technical and business teams to embed privacy requirements into processes, systems, and data practices.
Help shape privacy governance, compliance monitoring, and risk management strategies aligned with applicable laws, business priorities, and internal policies.
Participate in privacy incident response activities, including intake, documentation, follow-up actions, and lessons learned.
Help improve data subject rights operations, including intake, tracking, coordination, metrics, and process improvement.
Support third-party privacy reviews, due diligence, remediation tracking, and ongoing monitoring.
Develop metrics, dashboards, and executive reporting to track program performance, emerging risks, and overall privacy program maturity.
Drive process improvements, standardization, and tooling enhancements across privacy operations.
Serve as a strategic advisor to stakeholders by providing practical, risk-based guidance and influencing privacy decisions across the business.
Develop training, communications, and playbooks to support consistent privacy practices across teams and regions.
Qualifications
Required Skills and Experience
10+ years of experience in privacy compliance, privacy operations, data protection, or technical security governance, risk and compliance (GRC) or privacy program management.
Strong experience with privacy risk assessments, compliance oversight, gap remediation tracking, and control monitoring.
Proven success leading cross-functional projects and implementing strategic initiatives, with strong project management and leadership communication skills.
Strong understanding of global privacy requirements, including, but not limited to GDPR, CCPA/CPRA, HIPAA, etc.
Hands-on experience with core privacy compliance activities, such as:
Privacy assessments, DPIAs/PIAs, and remediation tracking
RoPA, data mapping, and documentation management
Incident response coordination, DSAR operations, or vendor privacy reviews
Metrics, reporting, policy implementation, and process improvement
Experience working with privacy and compliance frameworks, such as:
HITRUST
NIST Privacy Framework / NIST CSF
ISO 27001 / ISO 27701
SOC 2 or equivalent
Ability to turn legal and policy requirements into scalable operational processes and controls.
Strong analytical, problem-solving, and risk management skills.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence alignment across diverse teams.
Experience working in global, cross-functional environments.
Required Education and Training
Bachelor’s degree in business, Information Systems, compliance, risk management, or related discipline
At least one privacy certification, such as CIPP/US, CIPP/E, CIPM, CIPT, or CDPSE
Preferred Skills and Experience (As applicable - Specific skills, knowledge, and experience that are not required to perform the job, but are desirable to have)
Experience building or scaling privacy compliance or privacy operations programs and helping define long-term strategy in a global organization.
Experience with privacy tools or workflow platforms used for assessments, intake, case management, metrics, or evidence tracking.
Experience influencing cross-functional roadmaps, operating models, or governance decisions in complex, highly regulated environments.
Experience supporting audit readiness, regulatory inquiries, or compliance testing, including preparation for senior leadership or external stakeholder engagement.
Familiarity with AI governance and emerging privacy risks.
Experience in regulated industries such as healthcare, life sciences, academic research or medical device.
Advanced degree in law, risk management, compliance, Information Systems, or related field.
**Please note this role requires being onsite in our Sunnyvale, CA office three days per week.
Additional Information
Due to the nature of our business and the role, please note that Intuitive and/or your customer(s) may require that you show current proof of vaccination against certain diseases including COVID-19. Details can vary by role.
Intuitive is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants and employees, and prohibit discrimination and harassment of any type, without regard to race, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, color, age, religion, protected veteran or disability status, genetic information or any other status protected under federal, state, or local applicable laws.
U.S. Export Controls Disclaimer: In accordance with the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (15 CFR §743.13(b)), some roles at Intuitive Surgical may be subject to U.S. export controls for prospective employees who are nationals from countries currently on embargo or sanctions status.
Certain information you provide as part of the application will be used for purposes of determining whether Intuitive Surgical will need to (i) obtain an export license from the U.S. Government on your behalf (note: the government’s licensing process can take 3 to 6+ months) or (ii) implement a Technology Control Plan (“TCP”) (note: typically adds 2 weeks to the hiring process).
For any Intuitive role subject to export controls, final offers are contingent upon obtaining an approved export license and/or an executed TCP prior to the prospective employee’s start date, which may or may not be flexible, and within a timeframe that does not unreasonably impede the hiring need. If applicable, candidates will be notified and instructed on any requirements for these purposes.
We will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records in accordance with fair chance laws.
Preference will be given to qualified candidates who do not reside, or plan to reside, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Tennessee.
This position may be filled at a different job level than listed here depending on
business need and/or on the selected candidate’s experience, knowledge and skills.
Compensation will be based primarily on the job level at which the role is filled and the
candidate’s qualifications, consistent with applicable law.
We provide market-competitive compensation packages, inclusive of base pay, incentives, benefits, and equity. It would not be typical for someone to be hired at the top end of range for the role, as actual pay will be determined based on several factors, including experience, skills, and qualifications. The target compensation ranges are listed.