Companies to Know

There is a growing number of robotics company around the world. Below, we feature four top companies - you can see how diverse they are from each other. Explore their jobs pages and imagine what you could do today and tomorrow to prepare you for those jobs.

Accuray

Accuray develops and manufactures state-of-the-art radiation therapy equipment and robotic radiosurgical technologies.

Locations: Sunnyvale, CA and Madison, WI; Morges, Switzerland; Hong Kong and Tokyo.

If you have a medical, manufacturing, biophysics or chemistry background, you may be a good fit for robotics roles here.

ProTip: Accuray, like many other big companies, use Taleo (an applicant tracking system [ATS]) for their job postings. You can find unadvertised job postings via a Google search of systems like Taleo, Kenexa, and Jobvite. Read more about this process on Lifehacker.

FANUC Robotics

FANUC's global network of companies offers industry-leading products and services for robotics, CNC systems, and factory automation solutions.

Locations: Offices on every continent (except Antarctica!), including the U.S., South Africa, South Korea, Japan and Italy.

ProTip: It can be hard to get your foot in the door of a big company, but networking can get you in there. Reach out and connect with employees on LinkedIn or in-person events for a coffee or informational interview. Showcase your passion (use what you learned from the Udacity Explores: Product Pitch lesson!) and build a relationship with people. Most people are open to referring others for jobs at their company.

Mayfield Robotics

Mayfield Robotics has designed a home robot named Kuri, which Techcrunch describes as being like "an Amazon Echo designed by Pixar."

Locations: Redwood City, CA

There are hundreds of small robotics companies, like Mayfield, around the world. If you do a worldwide LinkedIn jobs search for "robotics" you'll find plenty of small, innovative companies. They tend to show up in growing tech hubs like Boston, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, São Paulo, Moscow, Bangalore, Amsterdam, and Toronto.

ProTip: A great way to find these small companies is by reading the local newspaper, in addition to larger news sites like IEEE Spectrum's newsfeed. If a company is doing something interesting, that usually means they're hiring.

Qualcomm

Qualcomm is an international company building semiconductor and telecommunications equipment. They're working on connecting autonomous robots and drones with cellular networks, among a bunch of other cool things. Check out their research here.

Locations: San Diego and many other U.S. and Canadian cities, with offices in India, China, Ireland, the U.K., South Korea, Taiwan and Israel.

ProTip: Qualcomm, and many other leading companies like it, is heavily involved in the robotics space. For example, they are a partner of the FIRST Tech Challenge for younger students. Set up a Google News Alert for "Qualcomm" + "robotics" to not only hear about their research, but if they're sponsoring any events or competitions.