Figure is hiring robot babysitters for $45 an hour
$45/hour is good money for babysitting
That's what you can get for babysitting humanoid robots at Figure.
The Santa Clara company is hiring a night-shift coordinator to oversee its humanoid robots from 10:30 p.m. to 7 a.m. Some shifts are also for the morning, starting at 6:30 AM. The pay: not bad, at $40 to $45 per hour. But the requirements include at least 3 years of leadership experience, and the ability to lift and maneuver equipment weighing up to 50 pounds.
Some of that equipment is the robots themselves.
The role isn't a one-off quirk. It's part of a network of roughly 30 jobs Figure has built around keeping its humanoids running at customer sites. Robot operators in Reno and Los Angeles earn $26 to $30 per hour. Robot pilots in San Jose can earn $32 per hour on 6-month contracts, wearing teleoperation equipment to guide robots through new behaviors and uploading the data for AI training.
What robot operators actually do
Overnight coordinators schedule operators, assign robots, make decisions when something goes wrong, and lead a team of robot handlers. This is active operations management, applied to a fleet of autonomous machines that can't yet manage an overnight factory shift without a human in charge.
Robot pilots will wear teleoperation gear to physically demonstrate behaviors to robots, then upload that data for training ... a core part of how Figure's AI development currently works: humans perform tasks, robots observe and learn, humans intervene when the learning breaks down.
The 50-pound lift requirement is a small detail, but shows that coordinators may need to physically move, adjust, or reposition robots during the shift. The machines are operational enough to work overnight, but not reliable enough to operate without human intervention when something goes sideways.
Or falls over.
The industry context
Robots are reaching factory floors and fulfillment centers, but every real deployment comes with a human support layer: robot operators, robot supervisors, robot trainers, robot pilots.
These are new job categories that didn't exist three years ago and don't appear in any official labor statistics yet.
The economics are still favorable for companies deploying robots. Figure itself is valued at $39 billion and has attracted capital against the thesis that humanoid robots will address the persistent labor shortages in manufacturing, logistics, and warehousing. The first half of 2026 saw $33.4B in robotics investment globally, already exceeding all of 2025.
But for now, the deployment reality looks more like a managed transition than a replacement. For every robot doing warehouse work, there's a support structure of human operators, coordinators, and trainers.
The ratio will improve over time, of course.
The job posting says something the press releases don't
Companies announcing robot deployments emphasize autonomy, reliability, and task completion rates.
That's real, but so is the work where robots require overnight babysitting, And the work of human coordinators making calls when things go wrong, and physical labor from the people managing the machines. That's where deployment is in late 2026 ... automation that can be genuinely useful but still needs humans in the loop.
The fear, repeated often, is that robots will eliminate jobs. For now at least, deploying robots creates jobs: operators, coordinators, pilots, trainers, and the people keeping the machines running when the engineers have gone home for the night.
Sources
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I tell stories with data and build startups. I've raised angel and VC funds, led software companies and startups, and chronicled the rise of the mobile economy. Currently I write for Forbes, host several podcasts, and am starting up HumanoidMegaHub. I was TUNE's mobile economist and Singular's VP of Insights, built the research team at VentureBeat, and managed teams creating software for partners like Intel and Disney. In past lives I built websites, e-learning platforms, and mobile apps, and, a long time ago, was named to Folio's top 100 of the media industry's "most innovative entrepreneurs and market shaker-uppers.”