Robotics Engineer

Robotics engineers design, build and program robots, from factory arms to warehouse and surgical machines. A big part of the job is physical: building prototypes, fitting sensors and motors, testing machines and fixing them when they fail in the real world. AI cannot do that part, and AI is also one of the reasons robotics is growing, because smarter software makes robots useful for more kinds of work. In a 2024 survey of employers for the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, robotics engineers were near the top of the list of fastest-growing jobs to 2030, just outside the top 15. BLS has no separate forecast for robotics engineers. For mechanical engineers, one of the closest fields, it projects 11% growth from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all jobs, partly because factories adding more complex automated machinery need engineers to design it and fit it in.

We had this at 1, the score for jobs where AI cannot do the core work. The evidence does not support that, so we have raised it to 2. Much of the work happens on a computer: 3D design, simulation, writing robot software and analyzing sensor data. O*NET, the US government's job database, lists "debug robotics programs" and "process or interpret signals or sensor data" among a robotics engineer's main tasks. A 2025 Microsoft Research study measured how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with, using 200,000 real conversations. It has no separate score for robotics engineers, but the broad government group they are counted in, "engineers, all other," came out in the top 28% of 785 jobs, and mechanical engineers in the top fifth. So AI can take on a real share of the desk work. Demand is growing fast enough to absorb that, which is the rubric's "2 Low." It sits below mechanical engineering (3) because employers expect robotics jobs to grow much faster: in the same employer survey, mechanical engineers were in the slower-growing half of the list. The Microsoft researchers also warn that a high score does not by itself mean job losses.

What would change this score. If AI tools start producing working robot designs and control software that need only a light check, and companies hire fewer junior robotics engineers, this goes to 3. If robot adoption speeds up and hiring of new graduates stays strong for several years, 1 could be justified again.