Senior R&D Manager, Smart Devices

Vocera now a part of Stryker is looking for Senior Technical R&D Manager is sought to lead the Embedded OS and UX team responsible for creating dependable, intuitive, and maintainable device platforms. This role combines people leadership with technical direction across Yocto Linux and/or Android OS, board support packages, system services, device integration, and user experience. The manager will guide a multidisciplinary team through architecture, development, validation, release, and sustainment, partnering across product, hardware, quality, security, and operations to deliver high-quality embedded products.

Success in this role means establishing technical clarity, raising engineering quality, and shipping platform capabilities that are scalable, secure, testable, and intuitive for the people who use them.

What You Will Do

Technical / Managerial Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of embedded OS platform architecture using Yocto Linux and/or Android OS, aligning platform choices with product, hardware, security, and UX goals.

• Own the team roadmap, architectural direction, technical debt strategy, and delivery plans for platform, middleware, device integration, and embedded UX capabilities.

• Provide technical leadership across board support packages, bootloaders, Linux kernel configuration, device drivers, hardware abstraction layers, system services, and application frameworks.

• Partner with Product, UX, Hardware, Systems, Quality, and Security teams to translate customer workflows into coherent, responsive, and accessible device experiences.

• Establish reproducible build and release practices, including source control, code review, continuous integration, automated validation, artifact traceability, and release governance.

• Strengthen product quality through unit, integration, system, performance, reliability, hardware-in-the-loop, and end-to-end testing across target devices.

• Guide secure platform engineering, including secure boot, signed software, permissions, vulnerability remediation, SBOM practices, and over-the-air update strategies.

• Work closely with Release Engineering and DevOps teams to ensure the smooth operation of build, test, packaging, deployment, and sustaining-engineering workflows.

• Drive functional excellence initiatives, deliver high-quality R&D functional deliverables, and ensure technical excellence for product or technology development. Drive technical projects of major magnitude and scope.

• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies, applying this knowledge to continuously improve embedded platform architecture, development practices, and UX quality.

• Act as a performance coach by providing actionable feedback, setting clear objectives, developing technical talent, and building an inclusive, accountable engineering culture.

• Communicate plans, risks, trade-offs, and technical information clearly to team members and business stakeholders, supporting decisions with evidence and sound engineering judgment.

What You Will Need

Technical Skills

• Strong experience building and shipping embedded Linux and/or Android-based products, with a practical understanding of OS architecture, system startup, resource management, and device lifecycle.

• Hands-on expertise with the Yocto Project, including custom layers, recipes, image generation, SDKs, reproducible builds, package management, and distro or machine configuration.

• Experience with Android OS or AOSP, including the Android build system, framework services, HALs, permissions, system applications, OTA updates, and platform customization.

• Proficiency in modern C/C++ and scripting with Python and shell; familiarity with Java or Kotlin for Android platform and application integration is a plus.

• Deep understanding of BSP development, U-Boot or other bootloaders, Linux kernel configuration, device drivers, middleware, and hardware abstraction layers.

• Experience with embedded UX technologies such as Android UI, Qt/QML, Wayland/Weston, or comparable frameworks, including performance, responsiveness, and accessibility considerations.

• Working knowledge of hardware and connectivity interfaces such as I2C, SPI, UART, USB, Ethernet, CAN, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and display or input subsystems.

• Strong debugging and profiling skills using tools such as GDB, perf, ftrace, kernel logs, logcat, crash dumps, tracing, and system observability tooling.

• Experience with CI/CD and engineering tools such as Git, Gerrit, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions, or similar technologies.

• Understanding of embedded security, secure boot, code signing, key management, vulnerability response, SBOMs, and long-term product maintenance.

• Strong problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyze complex technical issues and develop creative, evidence-based solutions.

• Good communication skills and the ability to work effectively in Agile, cross-functional, and geographically distributed development environments.

Leadership Experience

• Talented performance coach who is skilled at providing actionable feedback to team members, setting clear performance objectives, and managing team member performance.

• Experience executing a talent and performance-management strategy, including hiring, onboarding, development planning, succession planning, and organizational health.

• Demonstrated ability to communicate plans and technical information to team members and stakeholders within a business unit.

• Proven ability to deliver programs or other business goals on time, on quality, and within budget while managing scope, risk, dependencies, and trade-offs.

• Ability to balance hands-on technical depth with thoughtful delegation, coaching, and long-term team capability building.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, or a related field required; master's degree in a related field preferred.

• 15+ years of applicable experience, with 6+ years of direct people-management experience preferred.

• A strong level of understanding and experience in one's technical or functional disciplines, with the ability to mentor others and raise the engineering bar.