Figure

What Figure does

Figure builds humanoid robots, founded in 2022 by Brett Adcock and headquartered in San Jose. Its F.02 robot reached a real industrial milestone: it contributed to the production of 30,000 cars at BMW, and within ten months of first deployment ran full production on an active assembly line every working day on 10-hour shifts. Figure 03, powered by the Helix vision-language-action model, followed and even debuted at the White House in 2026. It is the highest-valuation humanoid startup in this cohort. That prominence cuts both ways: the BMW milestone is genuinely notable for a young humanoid company, but it has also drawn scrutiny over how much of the deployment was full production versus testing, which candidates should read about directly.

What it is like to work at Figure

Figure's careers page hires candidates who are hungry to make their impact across AI, engineering and design at its San Jose headquarters, and robotics work is essentially on-site given lab and integration requirements. Sentiment signals are thin and mixed: Indeed reviewers say the culture is awesome and that you feel appreciated with good schedule flexibility, while Glassdoor, with only five reviews and a roughly 3.5/5 estimate, warns to expect long hours and commuting. Because the review density is so low, culture signals should be read cautiously rather than as settled fact. What is safe to assume is a demanding, prototype-paced, on-site environment where hardware integration happens in the building and the schedule bends to hardware timelines.

What Figure pays

Levels.fyi shows a wide Figure pay range from about $110,550 (Electrical Engineer low-end) to $391,425 (Solution Architect high-end). One headline number circulates widely — a Staff Software Engineer median around $1.29M — but it is a clear outlier, not a typical offer, and should not be read as the going rate. A more realistic mid-range tracks the Robotics Engineer average near $144,485. As a private company at a very high valuation, packages lean heavily on illiquid equity, so the true value of any offer depends on eventual liquidity. Candidates should anchor expectations to the robotics-engineer band and treat the million-dollar figure as an exception rather than a benchmark.

How hiring works at Figure

A Figure AI Software Engineer interview guide dated April 6, 2026 outlines a structured loop that mixes robotics-domain questions — perception, manipulation, sim2real — with mechanical, electrical and locomotion fundamentals alongside AI coding. The bar is high because Figure competes for brand-name talent against Tesla Optimus, Physical Intelligence and Apptronik, so the screening is deep and robotics-systems-oriented rather than a generic software loop. Candidates should prepare across the full stack of embodied AI: the ML that drives behavior, the perception and control that make it real, and the physical constraints of an actual humanoid. Generalist coding prep alone will not be enough here.

Growth & trajectory

Figure exceeded $1B in Series C funding at a $39B post-money valuation on September 16, 2025. That valuation sits in striking tension with market sizing: Goldman Sachs has projected the humanoid market at roughly $38B by 2035, meaning Figure's valuation already exceeds that entire projected TAM — a real headwind if the projection is ever revised down. Headcount is undisclosed but engineering expanded alongside robotics scale-up. This is the highest-valuation and highest-headline company in the cohort, with enormous momentum and equally enormous expectations baked into the price. For candidates, the trajectory is defined as much by that valuation overhang as by the underlying product progress.

Risks to know

The sharpest risk is legal and reputational: a whistleblower lawsuit filed November 21, 2025 alleges a former engineer was unlawfully terminated after warning executives that the robots could fracture a human skull. Separately, Fortune has questioned whether the BMW partnership was exaggerated. The $39B valuation exceeds the 2035 humanoid-market TAM projection, and burn is high with uncertain unit economics — a typical pre-IPO humanoid risk profile, now compounded by active safety-related litigation. Candidates who would be uncomfortable working under a live workplace-safety lawsuit, or who are sensitive to gap between marketing narrative and independently verified milestones, should factor these heavily.

Who thrives at Figure (and who should not)

Thrives: ML and robotics engineers comfortable with physical-robot safety scrutiny and willing to defend commercial milestones under media attention, in a prototype-paced, on-site culture built around real hardware. Unlike pure-software AI, this is hands-on integration where robot safety is a live legal question, not an abstraction. Should not apply: anyone allergic to a workplace-safety-litigation backdrop, anyone who needs settled culture signals before joining given how thin the reviews are, or engineers who would not thrive in a long-hours, prototype environment anchored to a single San Jose HQ with a valuation that sets a very high bar to clear.

Roles Figure is hiring for

The roles Figure is most actively hiring right now in our index, with a live count and the salary guide for each:

The full board of open roles — with comp and location on every posting — is at the top of this page.

The signals behind this page

The hiring picture here is read from 92 live Figure postings in our index (refreshed weekly); 100% are remote-friendly, and in a recent sample 41 disclose a pay-transparency band. The culture, growth, and interview detail above is researched and cited; the open-roles board is live from our jobs index.

Sources

• Figure Exceeds $1B in Series C at $39B Post-Money (Sep 16, 2025)
• Figure AI whistleblower fired says robot can fracture a skull — CNBC (Nov 21, 2025)
• F.02 Contributed to Production of 30,000 Cars at BMW
• Is Figure AI’s BMW robot partnership exaggerated? — Fortune (Apr 6, 2025)
• Figure AI Software Engineer Interview Guide — Dataford (Apr 6, 2026)
• Figure AI Software Engineer Salary — Levels.fyi
• Figure AI Reviews (culture) — Glassdoor