OpenAI Dangles $500K Salaries for Robotics Hires

OpenAI is ramping up its push into robotics, and it’s backing that ambition with some of the most competitive salaries in the industry. According to a Business Insider report, the ChatGPT maker currently has 27 robotics roles open on its careers page, more than double the 11 positions listed in May. The openings span hardware, software, data collection, and prototyping, with base pay ranging from $177,000 to $500,000, on top of equity and performance bonuses.

Top Roles and Compensation

The highest-paying listing is a machine learning engineering position focused on building infrastructure to process, store, and move robotics training data at scale, with a base salary reaching $500,000. Other openings include a robotics software engineer role in San Francisco paying $255,000 to $325,000, hardware engineers working on motors and mechanical systems, a lab technician, a data collection facilities manager, and even an in-house lawyer dedicated to the robotics team. Cornell professor Guy Hoffman told Business Insider the hiring pattern suggests OpenAI is assembling a “custom robot design team.” The company also offers strong benefits, including 401(k) matching, up to 24 weeks of paid parental leave, and daily meals.

A Long-Term Bet on Physical AI

Job postings describe a mission to build general-purpose robots and work toward human-like intelligence across multiple machine types, with one listing envisioning a future where everyone owns a personal robot for everyday tasks. CEO Sam Altman has echoed this shift publicly, stating on the podcast Sources that OpenAI will “definitely do a humanoid” alongside other robot form factors. He pointed to data centers as an early use case, where robots could help maintain AI infrastructure, before eventually reaching consumers directly.