Robotics Engineer Salary: What the Wage Data Shows and What a Degree Costs

BLS counts robotics engineers in Engineers, All Other, a wider group with a May 2025 median of $122,930 a year. The middle half of that group earns between $90,970 and $158,090. Your pay will move with your state, your employer and where you sit in that range.

Why Is There No Official Robotics Engineer Salary?

Government wage surveys sort jobs by standard occupation codes, and robotics engineer is not one of them. BLS counts robotics engineers with Engineers, All Other (SOC 17-2199), so these figures cover that wider group.

That group is a catch-all. It holds engineers whose jobs do not fit a named category, and robotics engineers are one part of it. So the numbers below describe engineering pay broadly, with robotics inside it.

We use only the federal survey for wages. Salary pages built on job-board listings or self-reported surveys tend to show one clean number, and those figures are hard to compare from one year to the next. If you want the job itself, read our robotics engineer jobs guide.

What Is the Median Robotics Engineer Salary?

For the wider group, the national median is $122,930 a year, which works out to $59.10 an hour. The mean is $125,330, or $60.26 an hour. About 154,070 people held jobs in this group in May 2025.

The mean sits slightly above the median. That tells you a smaller number of high earners pull the average up, which is typical for engineering pay.

If you are leaving an hourly job, hold the hourly median up against what you earn now. If you are leaving a salaried one, the annual median is the cleaner comparison. Either way, treat it as the midpoint of a wide spread, not as a promise.

How Much Does Pay Vary by Percentile?

Percentiles show how pay spreads out. They are also the closest thing BLS gives you to an experience scale, because newer workers tend to sit lower in the spread and experienced workers higher. BLS does not report pay by years on the job, so we do not invent year bands.

• 10th percentile: $66,810.
• 25th percentile: $90,970.
• Median: $122,930.
• 75th percentile: $158,090.
• 90th percentile: $189,950.

A quarter of workers in this group earn $90,970 or less, and a quarter earn $158,090 or more. The gap between those two numbers is large, so the title on your offer letter and the employer behind it matter a great deal.

Read the 10th percentile with care. It mixes new workers with experienced people in lower-paying states, so it is not a starting salary.

Which States Pay Robotics Engineers the Most?

Where you work moves pay more than almost anything else you control. These are the highest state medians for the wider group, limited to states with at least 2,000 workers so a handful of jobs cannot skew the list.

• New Mexico: $162,070 median, 2,190 workers.
• Alabama: $152,550 median, 3,460 workers.
• District of Columbia: $151,920 median, 3,560 workers.
• Virginia: $148,160 median, 5,060 workers.
• Washington: $134,570 median, 3,580 workers.
• Colorado: $132,590 median, 2,540 workers.
• New Jersey: $132,450 median, 4,540 workers.
• Massachusetts: $131,260 median, 2,850 workers.

Notice that several of these are not the states people name first when they think of tech. Federal and defense work, national laboratories and manufacturing are common reasons pay runs high in places like New Mexico, Alabama and Virginia, though BLS does not say which employers drive each state.

Where Are the Most Robotics Engineer Jobs?

The biggest markets by worker count are not the highest payers, and that is worth knowing if you want many employers within driving distance.

• California: 28,610 workers, $130,850 median.
• Texas: 10,820 workers, $115,810 median.
• Florida: 8,600 workers, $105,410 median.
• Michigan: 7,700 workers, $121,000 median.
• Maryland: 7,340 workers, $129,770 median.
• Ohio: 7,000 workers, $120,470 median.

California’s top end shows how far pay can stretch. Its 90th percentile is $212,130, and its 10th percentile is $74,950. Maryland has a 90th percentile of $195,190 and a 10th percentile of $60,780.

At the lower end, Kansas has a median of $76,100 and Arkansas has $76,940, though both employ fewer than 1,000 workers in this group. Among larger markets, Tennessee’s median is $96,640 with 4,400 workers, and Louisiana’s is $99,070 with 6,310.

How Does State Pay Compare at the Top and Bottom of the Range?

The median hides the ends of each state’s range, and the ends are where a career plan lives. Use the 10th and 90th percentiles to see how far a state’s pay can stretch.

• New Mexico: $90,880 at the 10th percentile and $203,280 at the 90th.
• Virginia: $84,590 at the 10th percentile and $195,190 at the 90th.
• Washington: $81,280 at the 10th percentile and $196,120 at the 90th.
• Massachusetts: $83,740 at the 10th percentile and $187,010 at the 90th.
• Florida: $59,490 at the 10th percentile and $167,950 at the 90th.

Two things stand out. Even in the highest-paying states, the lowest-paid tenth earns far less than the median, so a high state median does not guarantee a high offer. And a lower-paying state such as Florida still has a 90th percentile of $167,950, so strong pay exists everywhere. It is simply rarer.

When you compare cities, use the state spread as a sanity check on any single number a recruiter quotes.

What Else Moves Pay?

Our data lets us name a few things honestly, and it does not let us name others.

State and local market. The spread between New Mexico’s $162,070 median and Tennessee’s $96,640 is the biggest lever. Cost of living offsets some of it, so a lower salary in one state can buy as much as a higher one in another.

Where you sit in the range. The step from the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile is the practical size of a career. Skills that employers need, such as perception, controls and machine learning, are how people tend to move up it.

The job behind the title. The group includes many kinds of engineers. A role writing perception software and a role integrating robots on a factory line may sit in the same BLS group and pay differently.

O*NET lists a bachelor’s degree as the typical entry level for robotics engineers, and that is the safest planning assumption.

How Do You Read an Offer Against These Numbers?

Start with your state, not the national median. If you live in Michigan, where 7,700 people work in this group at a $121,000 median, that number tells you more than $122,930 does. Then place the offer inside your state’s own spread.

Next, ask what the job really is. A posting that lists sensor processing, debugging and control software describes the kind of work O*NET attaches to robotics engineers. A posting that mostly describes drafting or paperwork may belong to a different slice of the same BLS group.

Finally, weigh the offer against your options. A fully remote software role can pay a different rate than an on-site integration role, and the survey does not split them. Ask each employer how pay is set, and whether it follows your location or theirs.

What Do the Duties Say About Pay?

Pay follows what employers need done, so the task list is worth reading. O*NET lists designing robotic systems, writing control software, building and testing robots, processing sensor data, debugging robotics programs and connecting robots to other equipment.

The software-heavy tasks overlap with jobs that have their own wage lines, and you can compare them on our pages for AI engineer salary and machine learning engineer salary. The hardware-heavy tasks do not overlap with those, which is why the wider engineering group is the better yardstick here.

People who can do both sides, writing perception code and getting it running on real hardware, are the ones employers tend to describe as hard to find. We cannot put a dollar figure on that, but it is a sensible reason to build projects that move.

How Fast Is Demand Growing?

O*NET projects slower than average growth for robotics engineers, 1 percent to 2 percent from 2024 to 2034, with about 9,300 openings. That is a cautious outlook, not a bleak one.

Most openings come from workers who retire or change jobs, not from brand-new positions. In a slow-growth field, pay tends to follow skills more than headcount, which is one reason a portfolio of working projects matters.

Projections are estimates, and they cover the whole occupation. A local employer that is expanding can hire faster than the national number suggests.

What Does an Online AI Degree Cost Against This Pay?

An AI degree is one route into the software and perception side of robotics, and a bachelor’s is the usual entry level. The numbers below come from the school prices on our list.

• Cheapest master’s: The University of Texas at Austin’s online MS in Artificial Intelligence costs $9,990 for 30 credits, at $333 per credit.
• Median master’s: $32,463 in total tuition across the master’s programs we track.
• Median bachelor’s: $58,800 in total tuition.
• Median certificate: $13,158 in total tuition.

Put the median master’s next to the pay range. At $32,463, it costs roughly a quarter of the group’s median annual wage, and less than the 25th percentile wage of $90,970. That does not mean it pays for itself. It means the price is small next to a year of engineering pay, and large next to what you may earn now.

Our cheapest online AI degrees list sorts programs by cost at every level, and the online master’s in artificial intelligence ranking shows tuition, admission rules and GRE policies for each. If you want programs that lean toward engineering, see the AI engineering degrees ranking.

Does an AI Degree Fit Robotics Pay?

It depends on where you start, and no federal survey promises a raise. Two situations come up most.

You already hold an engineering or computer science bachelor’s. A master’s with robotics electives, such as the online MS programs at Johns Hopkins and George Washington, adds perception and learning skills. Your pay would still depend on which robotics jobs you land. The jobs guide lists the programs that name robotics in their curriculum.

You hold a degree in another field. A bachelor’s in AI, or a master’s that accepts any bachelor’s field, is the longer route. Bridgeport’s online master’s, at $33,000 in total, takes applicants from any field. Add hardware projects of your own, because the degree will not supply them.

Whichever route you take, compare the full tuition to what you earn today, not to the median. Our guide on whether an AI degree is worth it shows how to run that comparison with your own numbers. For software-side pay, see AI engineer salary and machine learning engineer salary.