What is a day in the life of an average robotics engineer like?

Cisco
Dfjg50

Go to company page Cisco

Dfjg50
Jan 3 9 Comments

When I say average, I meant someone with a masters/bachelors degree without a Ph.D. None of those overachievers types who raked up multiple publications by the time they graduated from college. Or someone with a degree from Carnegie Mellon/Stanford. I am talking about an average person, someone with an average GPA who graduated from a tier 3 or tier 2 college.

Do you get to read a lot of papers as a part of your job?
Do you get to design your own algorithms? Pathfinding algorithms, SLAM etc.
Do you get to do a lot of prototyping/experimentation?
Do you get to train your own models?

Or are you more like a software engineer working in a robotics company? I.e. interfacing sensors to a machine learning model that someone with a Ph.D. built?

Is it possible to transition from a regular SWE job to a Robotics engineer job? If so, how? Can you give me some pointers.

TC:231K
YOE:4.5

9

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
  1. TOP
  2. RECENT
  3. OLD
 TOP 9 Comments
  • New
    robertRobo

    New

    robertRobo
    Which specialization? Industrial robots should be very different from on-road autonomous vehicles which is different from farming robots

    I'm doing on-road AVs, but there are a lot of subsections too. If you work in the localization team you're not likely to think much about path planning and vice versa
    Jan 3 4
    • New
      robertRobo

      New

      robertRobo
      There's quite a bit of hype about AVs at the moment and no shortage of job postings I think. The top players are probably Waymo and Cruise. If you want to write software for AV stacks it would help a lot to become good at modern C++ because that's what, according to what I know, most stacks primarily use. Also look at ROS (helpful for all things Robotics I'd say)
      Jan 3
    • Cisco
      Dfjg50

      Go to company page Cisco

      Dfjg50
      OP
      Thanks a lot. This gave me some good idea!
      Jan 3
  • PG&E
    cFNN20

    Go to company page PG&E

    cFNN20
    Robotics can be extremely challenging or can be nothing more than a regular swe depending on the vision of the company. It does require you to know the algorithms well or atleast have a decent understanding of it if you’re coming in as an algorithm engineer. But, like any field, it has requirement of a swe who can convert those requirements to a code which can be used in embedded environments. So, C++ all the way and also good experience in flashing, microcontrollers and SoC stuff. I’d say it’s quite challenging and overwhelming and some areas need expertise upto certain levels. Transition from swe to robotics is possible but if you want only to work on robotics and not much on swe stuff, you have to prove you have a very good understanding in one of the 4/5 areas of path planning, motion control, perception, localization and/or decision making.
    Jan 3 2
    • Cisco
      Dfjg50

      Go to company page Cisco

      Dfjg50
      OP
      So, I am working on modern C++ and I am also working on firmware development right now.

      What's the best way to gain knowledge in the areas that you mentioned. I already have a master's degree, so I cannot go back to college.

      Also, once I gain the required knowledge, how would I prove to recruiters that I have the requisite knowledge?
      Jan 3
    • PG&E
      cFNN20

      Go to company page PG&E

      cFNN20
      I’d suggest you to join as swe and then transition to algorithm engineer rather than directly swe
      Jan 3
  • following
    Jan 3 0