Pros
Coworkers are great, everyone is very friendly and willing to help each other Internal resources are useful and improving Job is generally interesting and engaging Per diem is good but does not make up for the amount of travel Environment is generally relaxed, very independent
Cons
Pay is not very competitive, raises are not very competitive, especially for the location A varying amount of travel, long trips away from home at locations that vary from interesting (NYC, Europe, Bay area) to extremely boring (NJ especially). You can be on-site for weeks or months away from home, come back to a break of a week or two, before being sent to another site for as long if you are unlucky with scheduling. The two above result in a high amount of turnover, though this has changed somewhat over the COVID pandemic, they seem to depend on a certain few colleges producing robotics engineers on a consistent basis. This turnover results in a lot of technical and social debt, though there are improving resources to address this, it is a band-aid solution to the ultimate issue of noncompetitive and opaque wages. There are a lot of responsibilities, and as listed in pros a lot of independence, but this can also be a negative as there is a large corpus of knowledge you are expected to pick up very quickly and then you are left to handle and self-manage projects right off the bat. Most other companies would segment the roles more, but you need to wear a lot of hats and don't really receive sufficient compensation for the real breadth of expertise and responsibility required to do the job well. While there are PMs who are great resources and the team lead and manager can help, you are often the most visible line of communication with the customer while onsite or during testing, and especially during delays or if there are any issues during commissioning, you need to manage expectations and be able to handle potentially tense or difficult situations where a customer may be displeased. Most other engineering positions do not require as much face time with customers, especially where you are often the only person on site for long periods of time during longer projects. Some customers are easier to handle than others. As a commissioner how you interact with the client can make or break whether they will return to purchase another system and so there is a lot of pressure to represent the company well. During your first project, you are supposed to shadow a more senior engineer through your first project, but often scheduling conflicts result in the new engineer being left to fend for themselves.