What job opportunities are there after a PhD in Robotics from a US University?

Two bits of advice first... First, if you look at it purely in financial terms, getting a PhD rarely pays off. You will lose at least five years during which time you could be earning a decent salary, plus you may incur student loans, depending on the situation you end up in in grad school (if you work as a TA or RA, typically your tuition will be covered). That doesn't mean you shouldn't get a PhD, but it does mean you should be clear on why your are making your decision. If you love research and want more control over your own destiny, by all means do it. But if you mostly want a higher salary or faster promotion, don't. Second, don't limit yourself to just robotics PhD programs. There's only one of those that I know of in the US anyway. Most graduate programs in robotics are actually in Departments of Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Aerospace Engineering. You asked specifically about job opportunities in India, and unfortunately I'm not qualified to answer that question. But if anyone else can speak to it, I would be fascinated to find out more about the robotics industry there. I will speak below about the US job market. I would expect the job market in Europe and Australia to be broadly similar (although government research in Europe varies quite a bit; in Germany and Scandinavia it's quite strong, but not as strong in eastern or southern Europe). All that said, as Tom Allen said, you essentially have three options (actually I'd say four). You could go into academia. There are quite a few openings in the US for academics with engineering and robotics background. Academia will give you the most freedom, the best job security (assuming you get tenure), and the lowest salary. Your access to research facilities will vary greatly depending on where you end up, but typically will be on the lower end of the scale. Expect starting salaries to be in the $80,000 range, with top salaries being around $200,000. I'm guessing, but I'd say there might be a dozen openings for robotics research faculty in the US at any given time. Next on the list is government research labs. A government lab will pay a bit better than an academic slot, starting at $100,000, although the top end of the scale is lower ($155,500 in the US this year). A government lab will have a bit less job security than an academic position, and a bit less freedom, but much much better facilities and access to a lot more research money. At any time, there are probably a couple of hundred potential openings for a roboticist at a government lab somewhere in the US, although finding them can be a bit difficult, and may require permanent resident or citizen status depending on the lab. Then there's a scientist position at a large company (typically this would be a major defense contractor such as Boeing, Lockheed, or Honeywell in the US, EADS or BAE Systems in Europe). The pay will be better, with the top end possibly as high as several hundred thousand a year if you make it into management. You will typically have much less freedom, even as a PhD, but you may work on even bigger programs than you would at a government lab, and hence have access to a lot more research money. There are a *lot* of openings for this kind of position, especially if you are willing to work on a product instead doing basic or applied research. This could also be a position at a medical device manufacturer. I don't know a lot about this field, but my limited experience tells me there is a ton of money going into prosthetics, surgical robotics, and related fields, and I would guess there would be at least hundreds of openings here as well. Finally, you could go with a startup. With a true startup you have essentially no job security. Your access to capital and resources will be severely constrained. And in the beginning you may have to work for peanuts. But you have an enormous amount of freedom, in theory - you'll have to keep your investors happy, which can be constraining, and of course you do have to make a profit eventually. If you get lucky, the sky is the limit regarding how much you can eventually make, but on the other hand you could end up broke. It's a bit hard to tell exactly how many startup opportunities exist, but they aren't exactly hard to find. I would guess there are probably around a fifty to a hundred viable startups in robotics in the US at any given time. Overall, I believe the job prospects for a PhD level roboticist are excellent. I can't think of another field that is poised to see the same level of growth over the next few decades.

Let's assume you get you succeed in your plan, and end up with a PhD - what next? There are two obvious paths; academia and industry. (There are also less obvious ones too; entrepreneurship, further study, etc.) To go into academia, you'd typically take one or two (more than that starts to look bad) post-docs in interesting labs around the world, then find a lectureship somewhere. To go into industry is possible through a hundred different strategies. For some, they simply ... get a job. For others, they need to hide their PhD because the only jobs they can find don't require a higher degree, and the hiring managers fear that someone with one might get bored easily and then leave. There are also plenty of employers that value PhDs; R&D departments of big technology companies such as IBM, Google, Rio Tinto, Coca Cola Amatil, Intel, Apple, etc frequently hire candidates with PhDs because much of the work they do is speculative research and requires an academically minded brain. Then there are government run research institutes - not university academia per se, but effectively the same thing only without the teaching and with more emphasis on inventing things that can be licensed or turned into products. (In Australia, for example, we have science-based () and IT-based () government run organisations that bring in significant amounts of money to the Australian economy through patent rights on WiFi and provably secure operating systems for mobile phones, amongst other things.) In terms of specific jobs for a robotics PhD, I believe the opportunities are enormous and growing. More and more new enterprises are entering the hardware space, and more and more hardware is being connected to software and/or the internet. Basic mechatronics skills are going to be increasingly useful in the future, and robotics PhDs have the advanced research skills to lead companies that will explore the new possibilities in these areas. So either get a job, make a job for yourself, or try staying in academia - just don't avoid a PhD simply because you can't see what's at the end of the tunnel. If you think you'll enjoy the PhD process, go for it. You won't be closing any doors, but you will open some!