How do you evaluate a company's actual runway before joining as an early employee?

[betty.king]

Counterpoint: A strong, well-documented personal project (even a modest DIY build or a solid simulation-based RL project) reportedly carries real weight in hiring for this field, partly because the field is young enough that a demonstrated hands-on track record can meaningfully substitute for a less-relevant formal credential.

[williams84]

Tangent, but worth mentioning: RSS (Robotics: Science and Systems), ICRA, and the IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference are commonly cited as the most directly relevant venues for someone specifically interested in legged locomotion and humanoid control research, as opposed to broader AI/ML conferences. Remote work remains genuinely limited for most hands-on humanoid hardware roles, given the need for physical access to robots and test environments, though software-only roles (simulation, perception algorithms, offline learning) increasingly do offer remote or hybrid arrangements.

[ssantos]

@williams84 This is exactly the kind of context I was looking for. Transitioning from industrial automation into humanoid-specific roles is a increasingly common and viable path, since a lot of the underlying skills (motion control, safety systems, real-time software) transfer directly, even though the specific dynamics and learned-control components are new. A whole-body control engineer's day-to-day work is a mix of formulating and tuning constrained optimization problems, debugging why a controller behaves differently on hardware than in simulation, and a surprising amount of time spent on numerical stability and solver performance rather than pure algorithm design. Makes me wonder how this looks in another five years.

[ivan22]

This matches what I've seen too. Transitioning from industrial automation into humanoid-specific roles is a increasingly common and viable path, since a lot of the underlying skills (motion control, safety systems, real-time software) transfer directly, even though the specific dynamics and learned-control components are new. Makes me wonder how this looks in another five years.

[charlesbianchi]

Small correction on one detail: A strong, well-documented personal project (even a modest DIY build or a solid simulation-based RL project) reportedly carries real weight in hiring for this field, partly because the field is young enough that a demonstrated hands-on track record can meaningfully substitute for a less-relevant formal credential. Totally unrelated but has anyone else noticed how fast component costs are dropping this year.

[mohammed64]

@charlesbianchi I'd frame this differently. RSS (Robotics: Science and Systems), ICRA, and the IEEE-RAS Humanoids conference are commonly cited as the most directly relevant venues for someone specifically interested in legged locomotion and humanoid control research, as opposed to broader AI/ML conferences. Reminds me a bit of the early drone hobbyist scene, honestly.

[betty.king]

@mohammed64 Pretty much this. One thing to add: The common academic path into this field is a master's or conversion course in robotics or machine learning, followed by an internship or research role at a known lab or company - a PhD is common but increasingly not strictly required for industry roles, especially on the applied engineering side.

[jwang]

Slight correction, though the overall point stands: In the UK, base salaries for robotics roles reportedly range from around £50,000 for new graduates up to roughly £200,000 for senior whole-body-control or reinforcement-learning specialists - a notably wide band reflecting how specialized the top end of the field has become.

[george92]

@jwang This matches what I've seen too. Companies like Figure, 1X, Apptronik, and Agility Robotics are reportedly pulling senior ROS, controls, and learning engineers directly out of warehouse-automation and industrial-robotics roles - a sign of real talent competition between adjacent industries, not just fresh grads entering the field.

[kim37]

Agreed, and I'd add: Robotics engineers in the US were reportedly seeing $150k-$205k total comp at mid-level and $205k-$300k at senior level in 2026, with humanoid- and foundation-model-specialist roles clearing $280k-$475k - a meaningful premium over general robotics/automation roles.