The Market for AV & Drone Operators Work

Method and definitions

The public job boards of the robot training employers and programs this site tracks, read every day. Apply clicks are made on RobotTraining.jobs; full descriptions come from the employers whose boards publish them. Every figure is computed by one database query over the window shown, the same query for the live report and for every edition. Each figure states its sample beneath it.

Kind of work

Each role is classified from its title and description into one of the seven kinds of robot training work this site tracks; this report counts the roles classified as AV & Drone Operators.

Fixed panel

The employers already tracked when the weekly series opens. The index follows their open roles, so an employer added later never reads as growth.

Index

The panel's average open roles in a week, divided by the same in the base week, times 100; shown beside the same index for all robot training work at the same employers.

Open role

A role listed by a given day and still in its employer's feed that day.

New listing

A role that first appeared during the window at an employer already tracked before that week. An employer's first week in this dataset is its back catalogue and is not counted as new.

Removed listing

A role that left its employer's feed during the window.

Days listed

From a removed role's listing date to the last day it was seen in its feed. A median needs at least 10 removed roles.

HHI

Herfindahl-Hirschman Index: the sum of every employer's squared percentage share of open roles, 0 to 10,000. Under 1,500 unconcentrated, 1,500 to 2,500 moderately, above 2,500 highly concentrated.

Advertised pay

The hourly figure a posting states (the middle of a stated range). Medians need at least 8 roles stating a rate; the middle half runs from the 25th to the 75th percentile.

Clicks per open role a week

Apply clicks on RobotTraining.jobs on a specific role, divided by the days the roles were open, times 7.

Demand index

Clicks per open role a week divided by the same rate across every role on the site. Above 1, the roles draw more applicants than the average role.

Listing age

When a role was listed relative to the window's first day: during the window, up to 4 weeks before it, 4 to 12 weeks before or longer. The listing date is the job board's posting date, or else the first day the role appeared in the feed.

Location rule

Read from each posting's location text: open worldwide, worldwide except listed countries, only listed countries, or no rule stated.

Open to a country

A role is open to residents of a country if it is open worldwide, its list names the country, or its exclusion list does not. The 20 countries compared are the same in every report of the series.

Window

Live: the last 28 complete days, in UTC, and the last twelve complete ISO weeks (from the week of 14 Sep 2026 at the earliest) for the weekly series. Edition: one calendar month, in UTC, and its weeks.

What this data cannot tell you

• Employers that recruit without a public job board are not counted, and some data-collection programs enrol people through an app rather than a job listing.
• A listing is not a hire. Some employers keep evergreen roles open for months, and some post one listing per city or country.
• Apply clicks measure interest among the people who use RobotTraining.jobs, and what is shown first gets clicked more. Clicks are never published by employer.
• The requirements figure appears only when at least 10 roles of this kind are described.
• A kind of work with few open roles gives figures that move with a handful of postings: rows on too little data are marked as a small sample.

How the job feeds are read and roles are classified: site methodology. How fresh, complete and consistent the data is, checked every day: data quality and coverage.

Editions

The live report covers the last 28 complete days and changes every day. Each complete month is also published as an edition, frozen two days after the month ends, so a figure you cite from an edition never moves.

• Live dataLast 28 complete days, recomputed daily

Cite and reuse

Free to quote, chart and republish under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. Live figures change daily: cite a monthly edition for numbers that will read the same later, or keep the access date.

@misc{robottrainingjobs_av_and_drone_operator_market_live,
  author = {{RobotTraining.jobs}},
  title = {The Market for AV & Drone Operators Work (live data, 12 Sep 2026 to 9 Oct 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {\url{https://robottraining.jobs/research/av-and-drone-operator-market}},
  note = {Accessed 10 Oct 2026},
}

Data: all figures as CSV (one line per value) or JSON. Every figure also downloads on its own. More open data: datasets and API.

More research

The same figures for every other kind of work:

• Robot Teleoperation market
• Data & Demonstration Collection market
• Egocentric & Wearable Capture market
• Embodied-AI Data Annotation market
• Robot Task Evaluation & QA market
• Robot Fleet Operations market

• The Robot Training Jobs IndexIs the market for human robot training work growing, week by week?Read the report
• Robot Training Hiring ActivityHow many robot training roles are open, who lists them, how fast do they turn over and who can apply?Read the report
• Robot Training Employers ComparedHow do the robot training employers and programs compare on listings, pay, reach and turnover?Read the report
• Robot Training Market ConcentrationHow many employers compete for each kind of robot training work, and how much of it does the leader hold?Read the report
• How Long Robot Training Roles Stay OpenHow long do robot training roles stay listed, and which kinds of work turn over fastest?Read the report
• When Robot Training Roles Are PostedWhen are robot training roles posted, and when do people apply?Read the report
• The State of Robot Training PayWhat does robot training work pay, by kind of work and by employer?Read the report

All 47 research reports