Co-op, User Experience - Robotics

About Rockwell Automation Robotics Center of Excellence

The Robotics Center of Excellence (RCoE) is the "innovation engine" of Rockwell Automation robotics. We are a dynamic, high-impact research group dedicated to applying the latest research to transform real-world industrial operations at scale. Our mission is to move beyond rigid, pre-programmed automation and usher in the new era of Autonomous Operations. Here, you'll work alongside world-class experts in a culture that prizes rapid prototyping, intellectual curiosity, and the drive to see "impossible" ideas working on the factory floor.

About the Job

We are looking for a passionate UX Coop who is eager to shape how humans and robots interact at the frontier of autonomous operations. In this role, you will join a UX team embedded inside a highly technical robotics research group, contributing across user experience research, interaction prototyping, and the design of new ways for people to work with intelligent machines.

This isn't a "make the screens pretty" role. We're thinking about how humans, robots, and machines talk to each other through interfaces, through behaviour, through whatever modality turns out to make sense. Some of what we do looks like traditional UX. A lot of it doesn't yet have a name.

About You

You are a "designer-researcher", someone who is just as comfortable framing a research question on a whiteboard as you are vibe coding a prototype to test it. You are:

• Driven & Passionate: You have an obsessive curiosity about how people interact with intelligent machines and a deep care for how things should feel, not just how they look.

• Autonomous and Collaborative: You can take a vaguely defined problem and run with it, and you thrive in a high-performing team where peer review and collective brainstorming elevate everyone.

• Innovative: You don't just apply existing patterns and frameworks; you invent new interaction models when the current state-of-the-art falls short.

• Impact-Oriented: You aren't satisfied with a polished mockup; you want to see your designs running on real robots in real environments.

Your Responsibilities:

• Design Contribution: Contribute to ongoing work in human-robot interaction, operator interfaces, and integrating robots into enterprise tools.

• UX Research: Frame the question, design the study, talk to operators and stakeholders, synthesize what you find, and bring it back as something the team can act on.

• Interaction Prototyping: Explore and prototype new modes of interaction with robotic systems; voice, gesture, ambient signals, chat-based agent control, spatial, whatever the problem calls for. Vibe code your way to something interactive, get it in front of people, and learn from it.

• Design Critique & Collaboration: Bring your work to the team early and often. Defend your decisions, absorb feedback from designers, researchers, and engineers, and help raise the bar through peer review.

• Dissemination: Document your process and findings through case studies, internal research reports, and (where appropriate) external publications or talks.

The Essentials - You Will Have:

• Actively pursuing a bachelors or advanced degree from an accredited college or university.

• Legal authorization to work in Canada is required. We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future for this job opening.

The Preferred - You Might Also Have:

• Design Foundation: Rooted in design, either by training or by obvious obsession. A portfolio that shows how you think, not just what you've shipped.

• UX Research: Comfort designing and running research; framing questions, talking to users, synthesizing what you learn, and defending what it tells you.

• Prototyping & Coding: Comfort with code, or at minimum comfort with vibe coding. You can get an LLM and a prototype to meet you halfway and turn a sketch into something interactive.

• Curiosity: Genuine interest in robots, autonomous systems, or how AI is changing the shape of human-machine interaction.

• Communication: Excellent teamwork and communication skills to collaborate effectively with a multi-functional and multi-disciplined team, in person or online.

• Problem Solving: A track record of working through complex, unstructured problems where the answer isn't obvious.

• Bonus points if you have:

  • Experience with Figma or equivalent design tools

  • Experience with ROS/ROS2

  • Familiarity with research repository tools like Dovetail

  • Prototyping experience in React or similar frameworks

  • Any AR, VR, or spatial computing experience

  • Experience with research, parsing academic publications, and literature review

  • Background in human factors, HCI, or interaction design research

  • Experience engaging with design or research communities through writing, talks, or open work

What We Offer:

For this role, the Hourly Compensation is from $20 - $32/hour. Actual pay will be based on factors such as skills, knowledge, education, and experience.

This posting is for a newly created position within our organization.

At Rockwell Automation we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you're excited about this role but your experience doesn't align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

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