Data report · updated 2026-11-01
Robot training pay in 2026: what open roles offer
Open robot training roles usually pay $20–$45/hr, with a median of $25/hr. That comes from 213 unique posted rates at 51 employers, across the 1,157 roles open today. It covers postings that show an hourly rate; it is not a measure of what every robot operator takes home.
Key findings
Today's numbers at a glance
Usual hourly pay
Median of $25/hr from 51 employers
Best-paid work: Robot Teleoperation
Typical pay: $25–$40/hr (11 employers)
of open roles show an hourly rate
805 of 1,157 open roles give no hourly figure: they list a salary, a per-task rate, or nothing.
Most openings: AV & Drone Operators
Roles open today (41 new this week, all kinds of work combined)
By kind of work
Median hourly pay, ranked
A kind of work appears here only when three or more employers post a live rate for it. That keeps every number a market rate instead of one company's price list. Bars show the median; the range column is the 25th to 75th percentile of posted rates.
| Work type | Median $/hr | Usual range |
|---|---|---|
| Robot Teleoperation | $30/hr | $25–$40/hr |
| Data & Demonstration Collection | $30/hr | $25–$50/hr |
| Embodied-AI Data Annotation | $30/hr | $7–$75/hr |
| AV & Drone Operators | $30/hr | $25–$50/hr |
| Robot Fleet Operations | $25/hr | $20–$40/hr |
| Egocentric & Wearable Capture | $10/hr | $6–$25/hr |
Need a personal earnings estimate, or the band at one specific employer? Try the interactive pay tool.
By employer
Best-paying employers today
Ranked by median, and limited to employers whose live feed carries enough real hourly rates to measure. Each figure reflects the mix of roles that employer advertises, not identical work in one city. Click a name for the full review.
| Employer | Median $/hr | Usual range |
|---|---|---|
| Kodiak AI | $35/hr | $35–$39/hr |
| Zipline | $35/hr | $35–$45/hr |
| DoorDash Labs | $35/hr | $30–$40/hr |
| Figure AI | $30/hr | $30–$65/hr |
| Aurora Innovation | $30/hr | $30–$38/hr |
| Amazon Prime Air | $30/hr | $30–$40/hr |
| HireArt | $30/hr | $25–$55/hr |
| Nuro | $26/hr | $26–$33/hr |
Where the work is
Open-role count for each kind of work
A good rate means little if nobody is hiring. Here is the live count of open roles per kind of work, plus how quickly new ones reach the feeds.
New-to-us roles each week
The average for the last 4 full weeks, across every employer we follow. We skip the first import from each employer so that adding one does not pad the figure. A role we see for the first time is not always a fresh posting, though.
Where the numbers come from
Methodology
134 employers publish a live job feed (out of the 164 RobotTraining.jobs tracks overall), and every number in this report comes from those feeds, pulled once a day. We take the hourly rate printed on each role. When one employer lists the same role at the same rate more than once, we keep a single copy. “Up to $X/hr” maximums are left out, because a cap is not a wage anyone was seen earning. Salaried roles, and recording programs that pay per accepted task or per minute of footage, stay in their own units; we never convert them to hourly pay.
For the headline “typical” range, the low end is the 25th percentile of posted pay (using the midpoint of each advertised range) and the high end is the 90th percentile of advertised ceilings. That lets the better-paid roles count while stopping any one posting from moving the range. Each kind of work gets its own band, the 25th to 75th percentile of its market. We only call a figure a market rate once its rates come from three or more employers, so one company’s price list never stands in for the going rate. Last refresh: 2026-11-01. See how we measure everything. AI-training work as a whole is measured from the platforms’ own job feeds in the AI training pay report on AITraining.jobs, a sister publication of ours.
Use this data
Quote or republish these numbers
You may quote and republish this data under CC BY 4.0. Name RobotTraining.jobs as the source and link back here. We measure again every day, so put the date next to any quote.
RobotTraining.jobs. Robot Training Pay Report, 2026. Data as of 2026-11-01. https://robottraining.jobs/robot-training-pay-report
Investing in robotics, AV or robot-data companies? Every posted rate behind this report, role by role and day by day, comes as files in the Robot hiring radar.
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Questions about robot training pay
What is the going hourly rate for robot training?
Postings for robot training usually list $20–$45/hr. The live median is $25/hr, taken from 213 unique posted rates at 51 employers. The rate moves with the type of job and the location, which is why this report gives every kind of work its own band. Recording programs that pay for each accepted task or each minute of footage stay in those units; we never convert them into an hourly wage.
Which kind of robot training job pays best right now?
Robot Teleoperation leads every kind of work that currently has a live market rate. Its median is $30/hr, and typical pay in its postings runs $25–$40/hr, based on 11 employers.
How many robot training postings show an hourly rate?
Roughly 30% of today's 1,157 open roles give an hourly rate. The other 805 list a salary, pay per task or per piece of footage, or leave pay out entirely. We count only hourly rates printed in the ads themselves, so the figures show what actual postings offer instead of a marketing "average".
How often do new robot training roles show up?
Around 40 roles a week show up in employer feeds that we had not seen before, averaged across the last 4 full weeks. We skip the first import from any employer, so adding one to the tracker does not pad the number. A role we see for the first time is not always a fresh posting, though.
Is this pay data current?
Yes. The numbers are rebuilt from each employer's live job feed (last refresh: 2026-11-01). We drop "up to $X/hr" maximums, since a cap is not a rate anyone was seen paying, and a role posted several times at one rate counts only once.