{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/electro-mechanical-and-mechatronics-technologists-and-technicians/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians", "soc_code": "17-3024", "category": "Engineering", "us_employment": 15520, "median_annual_wage": 73900 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 55, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 14, "embodiment": 18, "liability_shield": 3, "trust_premium": 7, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Physically re-shimming a misaligned harmonic drive, running a laser alignment on a gantry, tracing an intermittent encoder fault back to a chafed cable in a wire tray — these are the tasks that keep this at 14 rather than 18, because the parallel half of the job (interpreting PLC fault codes, writing test procedures, building HMI screens, producing calibration reports) is exactly what code generation and log analysis tools now do well.", "embodiment": "An 18 reflects that the work happens inside the machine envelope — lockout/tagout on a live line, crawling into a robot cell to reteach points, probing a 480V drive cabinet with a scope, and doing it on a plant floor with vibration, coolant mist and no fixed workspace; it stops short of 20 only because a meaningful share of bench calibration and simulation happens in a controlled lab.", "liability_shield": "A 3 is right because nothing in this role requires a state licence: employers ask for an associate degree in mechatronics or EET, maybe a vendor cert (Siemens, Allen-Bradley, FANUC) or an NFPA 70E arc-flash qualification, but the PE stamp on the machine design and the OSHA exposure both belong to the engineer and the employer, not the technician who commissioned it.", "trust_premium": "At 7 the relationship matters operationally — the maintenance manager calls the tech who knows which of the plant's twelve cells has the flaky proximity switch, and that institutional memory is real — but the customer is buying uptime, not you, and a contract integrator or a new hire with the same certs is a substitutable replacement in a way a surgeon is not.", "judgment_accountability": "13 is earned by the calls made with the line down and production shouting: deciding whether a servo fault is mechanical binding or a tuning problem, whether to bypass an interlock to test (and whether that is safe), whether a machine is fit to run another shift — real discretion with cost and injury consequences, but the final release-to-production and any design change go up to an engineer, which keeps it out of the 14+ band." }, "rationale": "The core of this job — installing, calibrating, and troubleshooting robotic cells, PLC-controlled lines, servo drives and sensor arrays — happens with hands on hardware in noisy, non-standard plant environments that robots cannot service themselves. What AI erodes is the desk half: reading schematics, drafting test reports, interpreting fault logs, writing ladder logic and HMI screens, and generating maintenance documentation. There is no license gate here, so the moat is physical access and diagnostic judgment when a machine fails in a way the manual never described.", "outlook": "Employment holds or grows modestly as factories automate more, but the reporting and code-drafting portion of the day shrinks and the job concentrates into on-site commissioning, retrofit, and fault diagnosis.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Adoption of functional-safety sign-off requirements that name a qualified person rather than a firm: ISO 13849 / IEC 62061 validation records and OSHA 1910.147 lockout-tagout verification already require a documented competent person, and TÜV/Exida Functional Safety Technician certification is increasingly written into OEM warranty and insurer terms. If a state or an insurer requires a named certified safety technician to personally attest to guard, light-curtain and e-stop validation after any robotic cell change — as some carriers now demand before covering collaborative-robot installs — the attestation becomes non-delegable.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "ANSI/RIA R15.06 and the emerging R15.08 mobile-robot standard becoming a de facto condition of workers' comp coverage, with the risk-assessment document requiring a signature from the technician who performed it.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift as AI absorbs the desk tier: ladder-logic drafting, HMI screen generation, fault-log summarization and O&M documentation are the automatable half. What remains is commissioning a cell that behaves differently than simulated, chasing intermittent faults with no log signature, and mechanical alignment. This raises the score only if headcount is not cut proportionally to the desk work removed — the residual job is denser but there is less of it.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Formalization of the restart decision: if plant safety programs or insurer conditions require the technician to be the named authority who releases a line back to production after a safety-system fault — rather than a supervisor or an automated interlock reset — the consequential call becomes owned rather than advisory.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Already near ceiling at 18. Marginal increase only if the installed base shifts further toward high-mix, retrofit and brownfield integration, where no digital twin exists and physical measurement is unavoidable.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "Embodiment is nearly maxed and cannot carry much more. Trust premium has no realistic route — buyers are plant engineering managers and integrators purchasing uptime, not a human touch, and no credible mechanism makes an industrial customer pay extra for human-performed calibration. The whole upside sits in liability, and it depends on functional-safety attestation attaching to a named individual rather than to an integration firm, which is not the current default in US practice." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2019, "emp": 14290, "wage": 58350 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 13160, "wage": 59800 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 11590, "wage": 60360 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 14540, "wage": 60570 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 15360, "wage": 65080 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 14680, "wage": 70760 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 15520, "wage": 73900 } ], "from": 2019, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 8.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": false }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "electrical-and-electronics-repairers-commercial-and-industrial-equipment", "title": "Electrical and Electronics Repairers, Commercial and Industrial Equipment", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 67, "median_wage": 74090, "overlap": 85, "skills_to_close": [ "Persuasion" ] }, { "slug": "avionics-technicians", "title": "Avionics Technicians", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 82280, "overlap": 85, "skills_to_close": [ "Persuasion" ] }, { "slug": "aircraft-mechanics-and-service-technicians", "title": "Aircraft Mechanics and Service Technicians", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 71, "median_wage": 79870, "overlap": 80, "skills_to_close": [ "Equipment Maintenance", "Repairing", "Troubleshooting", "Reading Comprehension" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }