Robotics career paths: from ROS tutorials to humanoids, drones and rovers
The four kinds of robotics jobs that are actually hiring, the free material that teaches the core stack, and how a planetary rover career usually starts on Earth.
The robotics companies on our jobs board fall into four groups: humanoids (Figure AI, Apptronik, Agility Robotics, 1X), autonomous vehicles (Waymo, Nuro), drones and delivery (Skydio, Zipline), and industrial and warehouse automation (Formic, Dexterity). Physical Intelligence, which builds general-purpose robot models, sits across all of them. None of them builds lunar rovers. All of them are hiring the skills lunar rovers need.
That’s the key fact for anyone who wants to work on planetary robots. NASA’s Moon Base rover update describes crew rovers being built by commercial companies, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost, under NASA task orders. Companies like those hire from the same pool as Waymo and Skydio. A few years on Earth perception or legged locomotion is the normal path.
The roles split roughly four ways too. Perception and autonomy engineers work on sensors, localization, mapping and planning. Controls engineers make the hardware do what the planner asked. Mechanical and mechatronics engineers design actuators, hands and structures. Test and field engineers, often the most accessible entry point, run robots in the real world and turn failures into bug reports.
The free core stack
Most of these companies run on, or interview in, the ideas behind ROS 2, the open-source Robot Operating System. The official Jazzy documentation includes a first-steps learning path covering nodes, topics, services, actions, parameters, launch files and bag recording, designed to be done in order. It costs nothing but evenings.
After that, MIT’s Visual Navigation for Autonomous Vehicles labs are free and go deep: Linux, C++ and Git, then trajectory following, feature detection, localization and SLAM. If you finish those labs and can explain your results, you’re ahead of many applicants with a robotics minor.
A real robot beats a simulated one in interviews. A cheap wheeled platform running your own ROS 2 navigation stack, with a video and a write-up of what broke, is the classic portfolio piece. Our portfolio guide covers scope.
Our view: robotics is the most open door in this whole field right now. The volume of postings is high, the tools are free, and a home project can demonstrate real skill in a way a hobby rocket can’t always match.
What would change our mind: a hiring slowdown at the humanoid companies, which have been the volume driver. We’ll watch our board’s robotics count weekly.
Not affiliated with NASA, SpaceX or any agency or company mentioned. Not investment advice. Disclaimer.