OpenAI is offering robotics engineers up to $500,000. Here's what its new job listings reveal.

OpenAI is offering robotics engineers up to half a million dollars a year in base salaries as it builds out its robotics efforts.

The company has 27 robotics jobs listed on its careers page, up from 11 in May, spanning hardware, software, data collection, and prototyping, according to Business Insider's review. Publicly advertised base salaries range from $177,000 to half a million dollars a year, before equity.

The listings offer a closer look at the range of robotics work OpenAI is doing itself. The company is hiring people to design and build hardware, collect the data needed to train robots, and test them, not just develop software that controls them.

OpenAI is hiring actuator design engineers, who build the motors and mechanisms that move a robot's joints, alongside software, firmware, and machine-learning engineers. It is looking for a lab technician to help "develop, build, test, and iterate on robotic systems," as well as a lawyer dedicated to the robotics team.

Another role would oversee OpenAI's "data collection facilities," pointing to one of the industry's biggest bottlenecks. Unlike large language models, which could be trained on vast amounts of data already on the internet, robots need examples of how people and machines interact with the physical world. Robotics companies often have to generate that data themselves or buy it from outside vendors.