Attracting & Retaining Engineers in Surgical Robotics 

Building a strong team can make or break a company. In the surgical robotics space there are plenty of opportunities for talented individuals, but how can companies choose the right candidates? On Episode 13 of The Surgibots Podcast I sat down with Aleksandar Nacev, the Chief Technology Officer at Promaxo Inc, who shared his insights on life as an engineer in the industry. He defined key characteristics that he looks for in his engineers, shared his advice for attracting and retaining a world class engineering team and offered advice for engineers themselves who are working in the industry. Here’s what he had to say:  

What makes a successful engineer in your experience? 

Because we've always run lean compared to a lot of companies in the space, what is critical is the hires that we have. If you're hiring somebody who has a specific skill set, they should be able to bring their expertise to the problem at hand. But, at the same time, because there's only a few of us, it's important for those individuals to be able to branch out and understand the rest of the ecosystem. They don't live in a vacuum. So, although not everyone needs to understand system engineering in terms of overall inner interfaces and integration, it's important for them to at least appreciate how their specific discipline interacts with others in different places.  

How do you attract and retain best-in-class talent?  

It's been interesting in terms of attraction in the space. Mainly what’s helped is our proven track record. We've been able to work on a project, create a product and move forward. That attracts people, right? Our attitude towards the medical device development space that really helps bring people in is using the way that people think about ‘the next product’ or whatever else they think will revolutionise the sector. That’s when they want to be part of it. If the team looks fantastic, we have a vision and a goal with what we're trying to do, that attracts people to the company too.  

For example, we have individuals who have come from large companies who specifically wanted to come to a startup because they saw that the development cycle was faster. The impact that they had at the larger company was slow, they don't move, they're not nimble. Now they really want to have a direct impact with what they see as their solution. It also allows them to use their intimate knowledge of the medical space. When they looked at us they saw that we were doing some crazy new stuff, and we're able to actually implement it. We met what we said we were going to do. That's been exciting, because they can say they were part of it.  

What advice would you give to an engineer who's looking to join the surgical robotics space?  

As always, have confidence in yourself and know your discipline very well so you can design something that will operate correctly. A bare minimum is also understanding the robotics space. Try to get some experience and understanding of the commercial and critical viability of a product associated in that space. The main goal of engineering is to develop technology that’s actually useful, right? You don't want to create a solution without a problem, so you need to understand the space you’re working in. That's usually very hard for engineers, but you have to come at it from the other angle. You have to challenge yourself to think about the problem that you have, then design a solution to that. And finally have fun. A lot of this work is challenging, so if you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're not going to want to keep doing it. There's going to always be challenges, so you have to figure out a way to enjoy them.  

 To hear more of Aleksandar’s insights, listen to Episode 13 of The Surgibots Podcast here.