An owner asks what a good robot programmer should earn and hears four answers. The project head quotes his own salary when he last switched firms. A recruiter names a figure that happens to suit her fee. A survey report lumps every 'automation engineer' together, from panel testers to SCADA architects. The candidate across the table says his current letter beats all of them. None of these is false, and none is enough by itself.
Few integrators can buy a survey cut finely enough for their trade. What they can build is more useful: a running log of pay evidence drawn from their own hiring and leaving, weighed with care. Here is how.
Pin down the seat before pricing it
Evidence only means something against a defined seat. Name the role family first: panel wiring, panel testing, controls, robot programming, vision, SCADA or field service. Then name the grade. Two more facts move pay hardest in this trade, the platform and the site share. A senior who teaches spot-weld guns on a body-in-white line and lives half the year in customers' plants carries a different price from a desk-bound senior on conveyor logic. A vision engineer who tunes inspection on blister packing lines differs again. If grades are not yet written, start with our fix for bands that trail the market.
Six sources already within reach
- Letters candidates show: an offer or current pay a candidate chooses to share, with consent, tagged with grade and platform.
- Offers you lost: each declined offer where money was the stated reason, plus the figure accepted elsewhere if the candidate says.
- Leavers' destinations: what departing engineers say the new seat pays, noted at the exit conversation.
- Recruiter intake calls: the range a recruiter proposes for a brief, which tends to reflect recent placements rather than hopes.
- Portal adverts: useful for direction, weak for level, since many state very wide ranges or none.
- The trade grapevine: application engineers at drive distributors, robot dealers' service teams, enclosure suppliers' salesmen and polytechnic batch groups often know what rivals and plants pay.
Where each source tends to mislead
- Candidates round up, and often quote cost to company as if it were in-hand pay.
- Recruiters paid on placement have reason to pitch a range high.
- Leavers sometimes inflate the new figure out of pride or to make a point.
- Adverts post aspirational ranges that few hires actually reach.
- Grapevine figures mix up sign-on bonuses, relocation and retention payments with fixed pay.
None of this makes the source useless. It means each entry needs its weight, and a single loud number should never move a band.
Normalise before comparing
Raw figures mislead. Split each into fixed monthly pay, variable pay and allowances. Note whether the number is cost to company or take-home, and convert everything to one basis. Daily site allowances, night-halt payments and lodging can make a travelling seat look far richer than a desk seat of the same grade. Overtime paid to wiremen distorts comparisons too. Record the city, because pay around a big industrial belt differs from a district town. When a candidate quotes only a total, our CTC break-up calculator helps separate the parts.
Building the evidence log
- 1
Capture each data point identically
Date, source, role family, grade, platform, city, site share, fixed monthly, variable, allowances and a weight.
- 2
Weight it honestly
Strong for a written letter seen or a lost offer with a stated figure. Medium for a recruiter's range or a leaver's account. Weak for adverts and hearsay from the grapevine.
- 3
Group by role family and grade
Read the spread for each group and lean on the strong points. Set aside any group holding only a couple of weak entries.
- 4
Plot your own engineers alongside
Place each person's fixed monthly pay, converted to the same basis, against the evidence for their group.
- 5
Choose your position deliberately
For each seat, decide to lead, match or trail. Leading can make sense for scarce robot or SCADA skills. Trailing may be defensible where you offer fewer site weeks or stronger training.
- 6
Refresh quarterly
Add new points, retire entries older than about a year, and look again at the scarcest seats.
Date gathered.
Source: letter seen, offer lost, leaver, recruiter, advert, grapevine.
Role family and grade: for example robot programmer, senior.
Platform and city.
Site share: mostly desk, mixed, mostly site.
Fixed monthly, variable, allowances (converted to one basis).
Weight: strong, medium, weak.
Notes: anything unusual, such as a joining bonus or a notice buyout.Reading the spread, and what money does not explain
Expect scatter. Two programmers at the same grade may sit far apart because one teaches welding robots and the other loads machine tools. Do not average them into one figure. Look instead for clusters of strong points, and for whether your engineers sit above, inside or below them. Also note offers lost for reasons other than pay. Some candidates decline over travel, a thin title or an ageing controller platform. They are telling you money is one lever among several. Lifting a band alone may leave that seat empty.
Keeping the log trustworthy and private
Request pay details, never demand them, and say where they will be kept. Hold the log with HR and the owner, away from shared drives. Strip names before project heads see any summary. Access questions are covered in deciding who may view salary data. Robot integrators and panel shops face different pressures. See the benchmarking guidance for robot cell builders and its panel shop equivalent. GullyHR's compensation benchmarking service builds and reads these logs with you. Recurring issues beyond pay are mapped on our hub for controls integrators.
