Principal R&D Engineer

At Abbott, you can do work that matters, grow, and learn, care for yourself and your 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 a 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 worldwide 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 the best place to work for diversity, working mothers, female executives, and scientists.

This position works out of our Plymouth, MN location in the EP division.

Leading an active lifestyle is important to the many people we serve. In Abbott’s Electrophysiology (EP) division, we’re advancing the treatment of heart and vascular disease through breakthrough medical technologies, allowing people to restore their health and get on with their lives. 

As the Principal R&D Engineer, you will be part of our Electrophysiology catheter research and development team focused on delivering the future in therapy and diagnostic catheters.  This role will involve a range of responsibilities including but not limited to design concept development, prototyping and testing, requirements development, material research, design of test fixtures and test method development, manufacturing support and collaboration with the process development team.

A critical aspect of this role is deep expertise in the design, characterization, and processing of Nitinol (NiTi) for use in medical devices. You will serve as a subject‑matter expert in shape‑memory and superelastic materials and will guide the team in selecting, designing, and processing of Nitinol components.

• Utilize multidisciplinary engineering knowledge and experience to design and develop single use catheters for electrophysiology applications. 
• Plan, schedule and lead workstreams of substantial complexity as part of early feasibility projects, clinical and commercial product development programs.
• Serve as the in‑house expert for Nitinol, including alloy selection, superelastic behavior, heat‑setting, shape‑setting, joining methods, fatigue considerations, and surface finishing processes.
• Lead development and qualification of Nitinol components and subassemblies used in EP catheter systems.
• Collaborate with process development and manufacturing engineering to ensure robust, scalable Nitinol processing methods.
• Leads technical teams through problem solving based on a structured approach rooted in engineering fundamentals.
• Effectively communicate with internal stakeholders, cross functional team members, external consultants, and physician customers.
• Actively participate in preclinical evaluations and physician engagement activities.
• Writes and submits intellectual property.
• Ensure quality system compliance for medical device development.
• Champions design for manufacturability as part of the development process.

• Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical/Chemical/Biomedical Engineering,
• Required minimum years of work experience in medical device R&D - 8+ years with BS, 6+ years with MS or 4+ years with PhD.
• Strong verbal and written communications with ability to effectively communicate at multiple levels in the organization.
• Experience leading and managing complex technical workstreams within a large program.
• Ability to leverage and/or engage others to accomplish projects and influence without authority.
• Demonstrated, hands‑on experience designing and processing Nitinol components for medical devices

• Experienced and knowledgeable in the design of electromechanical systems
• Prior experience in electrophysiology systems and catheter development – preferably development of high voltage therapy delivery devices.
• Ability to drive to solutions for complex technical problems using structured problem-solving techniques and use of tools like computational modeling etc.
• Experienced with a variety of manufacturing processes and design for manufacturability.
• Experience collaborating with suppliers developing Nitinol‑based components.

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