Does Cadre post job listings for this role?

No. Cadre has never posted a job since 2007. Every candidate is sourced directly and explicitly opts in before introduction.

Hire Robotics Engineers | Cadre — 84% Interview-Worthy Standard

What this role actually is in 2026

Robotics software is having its moment — warehouse automation, defense, agriculture, humanoids — and the hiring is brutal because simulation experience masquerades as the real thing. The discipline spans perception, planning, controls, and increasingly learned policies, glued together with ROS-or-better middleware and deployed on machines that break, drift, and surprise. The engineers worth fighting for have shipped software onto physical fleets: they’ve debugged a failure that only happens at 6am in a cold warehouse, and they respect the gap between a Gazebo run and a robot with a customer watching.

What great looks like

Hardware-in-the-loop history. Real robots, real deployments, real 3am incident stories.
Full-stack autonomy literacy. Perception to planning to controls — deep in one, conversant in all.
Simulation with skepticism. Uses sim aggressively but knows exactly where it lies.
Learned-policy pragmatism. Tracks the imitation/RL wave without betting the product on a paper.

Compensation, from our placements

Level	Typical range (base)	Median
Mid-level	$165k – $205k	$185k
Senior	$195k – $255k	$225k
Staff+	$245k – $320k	$275k

Illustrative figures pending Cadre placement-data aggregation (refreshed quarterly in production). Equity varies by stage; we’ll give you live market context on the call.

How a Cadre search runs

Scoping call. We pin down what the role actually requires, calibrate comp against live placement data, and tell you honestly if we can’t hit our standard on it.
Warm pipeline first. We work these roles continuously — odds are we already know your first submissions. Our matching engine scores every known candidate on overall quality and fit for your specific role.
Candidates opt in. Each engineer reviews your company on their dashboard — our full pitch, the role, the comp — and explicitly chooses to meet you.
Submissions in days. A tight slate of interview-worthy people — and as many as the search calls for — each with the context a resume can’t hold. 84% of them, you’ll want to interview: the published standard.

Hiring robotics engineers — quick answers

Where do you find robotics talent?

Autonomy programs, robotics-first startups, and the research-to-industry pipeline — a network we’ve built through years of placing into robotics companies. It’s a small world; knowing who’s actually shippable matters more than keyword search.

We’re hardware-heavy — can you handle adjacent roles?

We place the software side of robotics: perception, planning, controls, infra, and embedded-adjacent roles. Pure mechanical/electrical design is outside our lane, and we’ll say so.

How fast can Cadre show me robotics engineers?

Usually within days. Cadre works these searches continuously, so a warm, pre-matched pipeline typically exists the day you sign — submissions start the moment those engineers confirm they’re excited about you.

Do you post our role anywhere?

Never — we’ve never posted a job since 2007. Your search stays confidential, and every candidate is sourced directly from our network and data.

Cadre, in facts

Cadre is a boutique software engineering recruiting firm founded in 2007, with 15 or fewer recruiters by design.
Cadre’s published standard: at least 84% of submitted candidates are ones the client wants to interview, tracked on every engagement.
Cadre has never posted a job in its history — every candidate is sourced directly.
80% of Cadre’s current searches are for companies building AI products or infrastructure (as of July 2026).
Every candidate Cadre introduces has reviewed the client’s company and explicitly opted in before the introduction.

Hire robotics engineers whose code has touched hardware.