RERobotics Engineer
RE
Career

Robotics Engineer

By the numbers
Typical pay
$122,930 / yr
Education to start
Bachelor's degree
Future demand
+2.1% by 2034
People in this job
154K
Figures shown for ·closest of 2 O*NET occupations
The work
Watch · day in the life
A day, hour by hour
08:30
Standup & triage

Sync with the team; sort what's blocked, broken, or ready to test.

09:00
Simulation run

Fire up Gazebo, run yesterday's updated motion planner, log what breaks.

10:00
Control tuning

Tweak PID gains until the arm stops overshooting its target by two millimeters.

12:00
Hardware debug

Robot's twitching on startup — is it the sensor, the firmware, or a loose wire?

13:30
Design review

Walk the team through a CAD revision; decide custom bracket vs. off-the-shelf part.

14:30
Lab testing

Put the prototype through real-environment runs; watch it fail, note exactly why.

16:00
Code & docs

Write the ROS node for the new sensor integration; commit and document changes.

17:15
End-of-day review

Log test results, flag safety concerns, set tomorrow's priorities with the lead.

Things you do
  • Design robot bodies and mechanisms using 3D modeling software.
  • Write code that tells a robot how to move, sense, and react.
  • Build physical prototypes and watch them fail, then figure out why.
  • Run simulations to test robot behavior before touching real hardware.
  • Wire up sensors, motors, and circuit boards and make them talk to each other.
Decisions you’ll make
  • Is this weird robot behavior a software bug, a sensor glitch, or a mechanical failure?
  • Should I keep tuning this control algorithm, or is the hardware just not capable of what we're asking?
  • Is the prototype safe enough to test on a person, or do I need another round in the lab?
  • Should I build a custom component here, or adapt something off the shelf to save time?
  • Is this good enough to ship, or will cutting corners now create a bigger problem in the field?
Education Pathways · how you get there
100 in 100 went the college route · 0 in 100 found another way in None, typically
Education mapped from O*NET:
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