Dental Jobs in Sunnyvale: What It's Like to Work at a Specialty Endodontic Office

If you're searching for dental assistant jobs in Sunnyvale, front office roles in the South Bay, or just wondering whether a specialty practice might suit you better than your current general office — this post is the straightforward answer I'd give you if we were talking in person.

I'm Dr. Jason Kung. I run Silicon Valley Endodontics, a specialty endodontic practice at 1565 Hollenbeck Ave in Sunnyvale. We do one thing: root canals, retreatments, and endodontic microsurgery. No cleanings, no crowns, no ortho. Just tooth-saving procedures, done carefully, with a small team that has to work well together because there's no one else to pick up the slack.

We're hiring right now — front office, dental assistant (back office), and sterilization/auxiliary positions — and I want to give candidates a real picture of what we actually do here before they apply.

How a Specialty Endo Practice Is Different From General Dentistry

Most dental offices try to see as many patients as possible in a day. That's not a criticism — it's just the economics of general practice. Specialty is different. An endodontic procedure takes time. A thorough root canal on a molar, done properly under the microscope with CBCT imaging and careful irrigation, can take 90 minutes to two hours. We don't rush it. We're not set up to rush it.

What that means for the people who work here:

• The pace is deliberate. You have time to do things right, ask questions, and actually connect with the patient sitting in the chair — not just shuffle them in and out.
• The clinical complexity is higher. Our patients often come to us after a previous root canal failed, or with anatomy that's genuinely difficult. Challenging cases are the norm, not the exception. If that sounds interesting, you'll like it here. If you prefer predictable, routine procedures, general dentistry might be a better fit.
• The equipment is specialized. We use a Zeiss surgical microscope for every procedure, a CBCT scanner for complex imaging, and electronic apex locators to measure root canals precisely. Working here means learning tools you won't find in most general offices.

What the Front Office Role Actually Involves

Our front office team handles the full patient journey from referral to discharge — and because we're a specialty practice, almost every patient arrives via a referral from their general dentist. That shapes the work in specific ways.

A typical day involves:

• Answering phones and triaging — a lot of our incoming calls are from patients in pain or from referring offices checking on a patient's status
• Insurance verification and pre-authorization for endodontic procedures (endo benefit codes are their own world; you'll learn them fast)
• Treatment coordination — explaining what the procedure involves, what it costs out-of-pocket, and what the patient should expect before and after
• Coordinating with referring dentist offices — this is a relationship-maintenance role as much as an administrative one
• Scheduling with realistic time blocks (no double-booking a molar root canal into a 45-minute slot)

If you've worked front office in a general practice, you already have most of the foundational skills. The specialty-specific pieces — endo insurance codes, referral workflows, communicating with anxious patients — are things we'll train you on.

What Dental Assistants Do Here

Chairside assisting in an endodontic practice is technically demanding. Here's what a typical procedure day looks like for our back office team:

• Setup and room prep: Each procedure room is set up specifically for the type of case — standard root canal, retreatment, apicoectomy, and pulpotomy each have their own instrument layouts.
• Microscope positioning: The surgical microscope is the center of every procedure. Assistants learn how to position it, adjust lighting, and anticipate what the doctor needs without being asked.
• Irrigation and suction: Endodontic irrigation is precise — different solutions, specific sequences, and timing that matters. You'll be trained on the why, not just the how.
• CBCT imaging: We use cone beam CT to visualize root anatomy in three dimensions before and during complex cases. Assistants run the scanner and help interpret what we're looking at.
• Patient management: Our patients are often anxious. One of the most valuable things an assistant can do is be calm, clear, and reassuring from the moment the patient sits down.

RDA licensure is preferred for clinical roles, but we'll consider unlicensed dental assistants with a genuine interest in endodontics. X-ray safety certification is required to take radiographs. If you're early in your career and don't have endo experience yet — that's fine. Most people who work specialty dentistry learned it on the job.

The Team and Culture

We're a small office. That means when you do good work, it's noticed — by me, by patients, by the referring dentists who hear back from their patients. There's no bureaucratic layer between you and the doctor. If something isn't working well clinically or operationally, you can say so and we'll talk about it.

It also means there's nowhere to hide. If you're not pulling your weight, everyone knows. Small teams only function if everyone's accountable to the same standard.

Our patients arrive from across the South Bay — Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Mountain View, San Jose — often referred by dentists they trust, sometimes in real pain. Taking care of them well is the job. People who do well here are usually the ones who take that seriously.

Growth and Learning at a Specialty Practice

Working at a specialty practice is a specific kind of career investment. The procedures you learn here — microscope-assisted endodontics, CBCT interpretation, complex case management — are skills in demand across the specialty dental world. Endodontists, oral surgeons, and periodontists all want assistants who understand surgical workflows and precision instrumentation. Front office coordinators who understand specialty billing and referral pipelines are a genuinely short supply.

We have team members who came from general dentistry and found they preferred the depth of specialty. We've also helped team members pursue RDA licensure or move toward dental hygiene programs. If you're early in your career and want to grow, a small specialty office is one of the better training environments — you'll see more of the clinical picture, more directly, than you would in a large multi-chair general practice.

Schedule and Location

We're open weekdays and select weekends at our Sunnyvale office at 1565 Hollenbeck Ave, Suite 106 — near the intersection of Hollenbeck and El Camino Real, accessible from Lawrence Expressway and about a mile from Sunnyvale Caltrain. Parking is free in the building lot.

We try to build schedules around people's real constraints — school, second jobs, family obligations. Part-time is an option for most roles. Let us know what you're working with and we'll see if it fits.

How to Apply

If this sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we'd like to hear from you. Our careers page has the full application form and a PDF application you can download and email if you prefer. We review every application personally — no automated filtering, no ATS black hole. If there's a fit, we'll reach out to schedule a conversation.

Questions before applying? Email us at siliconvalleyendo@gmail.com. We're a small office and we try to respond to everyone.