The Rarest Skill in Robotics Isn't the Newest Thing. It's the Oldest.
Quick answer: An automotive final-assembly line in Greensburg, Indiana needs two Motoman robot programmers, starting immediately and running through the end of October. The mandatory stack is Yaskawa/Motoman — DX100, DX200, MRC and NX100. It is weekend work: 12-hour days, two days a week, with travel on Friday and Monday (and possibly working some Mondays). It pays $52.40 per hour — and travel time is paid at that same rate — plus a $70/day per diem with no receipts required, a $130/day hotel allowance, and mileage at $0.725 per mile. You can view and apply on the contract page free, or, if you are hiring, post your own work free or search the marketplace and request a professional directly. Greensburg is a Honda town — Honda has built vehicles there since 2008, and has been manufacturing in America since 1979.
What doesn't make the keynote
Most of the robotics industry has spent 2026 telling you that programming is about to become trivial. Talk to the robot in plain English. Let the AI generate the motion code. Point, click, done. The trade coverage of where factory floors are heading in mid-2026 is full of it, and a good deal of it is genuinely coming.
Here is the part that does not make the keynote.
The robots actually building cars in America this weekend are not the ones on that stage. They were installed years ago, they are paid for, they work, and nobody is ripping out a functioning final-assembly cell because a conference demo looked slick. On the line in Greensburg, Indiana, that means Motoman controllers: DX100, DX200, MRC and NX100. Two of those generations are old enough that a lot of working programmers have simply never opened one.
Which produces a strange and very profitable situation. The scarcest robotics skill in the American automotive industry right now is not the newest thing anyone is selling. It is the oldest thing on the floor — and the number of people who can still speak to it goes down every single year.
Try to name a robot programmer under thirty who has ever touched an MRC. Take your time.
The contract
- Role: Robot Programmer — 2 needed
- Location: Greensburg, Indiana (Decatur County, southeast of Indianapolis)
- Application: Automotive final assembly
- Stack (mandatory): Yaskawa / Motoman — DX100, DX200, MRC, NX100
- Scope: Motoman robot programming support
- Start: Immediate · Runs through: the end of October
- Schedule: Weekend work — 12-hour days, 2 days per week; travel Friday and Monday, possibly working some Mondays
- Rate: $52.40 per hour — travel time paid at the same rate
- Expenses: $70/day per diem (receipts not required) · $130/day hotel allowance · $0.725 per mile
- On-site: standard PPE, lockout/tagout, bump cap, hi-vis vest
Read the money properly
Rates on a job post are easy to skim. This one deserves an actual read, because three lines in it are doing real work.
Travel time is paid at the full $52.40. Not a flat stipend, not "we'll cover gas" — your Friday and your Monday are on the clock at your rate. Anyone who has spent a career eating travel days for free knows exactly how unusual that line is, and exactly what it is worth.
The per diem is $70 a day and does not require receipts. That is clean money. You are not building a shoebox of gas-station receipts to justify a sandwich.
The hotel is covered at $130 a day, and mileage runs $0.725 per mile. Between the three of them, the cost of showing up is not yours to carry.
And then the structure itself: two days a week. Twelve-hour days, yes — but Monday through Thursday stays yours. For a programmer already carrying weekday work, or running their own shop, or simply unwilling to hand a plant their entire life, a weekend contract with paid travel is not a compromise. It is the whole point.
Greensburg is a Honda town — and Honda's American story is worth knowing
You cannot really talk about building cars in Greensburg without talking about Honda, because Honda is why cars get built in Greensburg at all.
Start earlier than most people do. In 1979, Honda became the first Japanese automaker to build products in America — and it did not start with cars. It started with motorcycles, in Marysville, Ohio, with 64 associates building the Elsinore CR250. At the time, the idea that a Japanese company could manufacture successfully in the American Midwest was not obvious to anyone. Honda simply went and did it.
Cars followed on November 1, 1982, when the first Accord came off the line in Marysville. The Accord remains that plant's core product more than four decades later.
Then came the part most people forget: Honda built ATVs in America too. Honda of South Carolina opened in Timmonsville on July 1, 1998, building the FourTrax ATV line, adding engine production in 2000 and Pioneer side-by-sides in 2014. The lineup has since shifted — ATV production now runs out of Honda's North Carolina plant, and Timmonsville has become the only plant in the world building Honda side-by-sides — but the point stands: motorcycles, cars, ATVs, engines. Honda kept betting on American manufacturing, and kept widening what "American manufacturing" meant.
Greensburg came in 2008. Honda's Indiana Auto Plant began production on October 9 of that year with roughly 900 associates building Civic sedans. It later added the CR-V in 2017 — the plant's first SUV — and went on to build the Civic Hatchback for the first time ever in America. The plant has since passed three million vehicles.
Three million cars do not assemble themselves. Every one of them passed through robots that somebody taught.
Why Indiana
Indiana does not get the automotive headlines that Michigan gets, and people who actually work in this industry find that funny. The state is stitched with vehicle and component plants, its supplier base runs deep, and Greensburg sits an easy run southeast of Indianapolis — close enough to the crossroads of the country that a specialist can get in and out on a weekend rotation without it eating their life.
That geography is exactly why a weekend contract like this one works here. Fly or drive in Friday — on the clock — work the two long days the line actually needs, and be back Monday with the mileage and hotel covered. In a lot of the country that math does not close. In Indiana it does.
Why this fills on Automate America
Automate America is a global marketplace of thousands of skilled professionals across hundreds of occupations, in every industry — industrial, commercial and residential — worldwide. Not a staffing desk. A marketplace, where the company and the professional can see each other directly.
It works two ways, and both are free. A company can post a contract, a job, or an RFQ and let qualified professionals come to it — or skip the wait entirely and search the marketplace and request the exact professional it needs. Professionals can browse open hourly contracts, apply in a couple of clicks, and follow the companies whose work they want to see first. Everyone carries their own record — trusted professionals with completed contracts and customer reviews.
For the hiring side, the usual hesitations answer themselves. Is it really free to post? Yes — posting a contract, a job, or an RFQ costs nothing. Will you get buried in unqualified applicants? No — you see profiles of experienced industry professionals and you decide who to talk to. How fast does specialized work fill? You see qualified applicants within minutes of posting. And if you need a hand, you are one message away at info@automateamerica.com.
A contract that needs MRC and NX100 fluency is precisely the kind of narrow, urgent, specialist ask that a general job board is worst at and a marketplace is best at. There is no keyword on a résumé board for "can still talk to a controller from two generations ago." There are, however, professionals on this marketplace who can.
Robot programmers here work alongside the rest of the bench — controls engineers, maintenance technicians and manufacturing engineers — the same crew that keeps a final-assembly line breathing. Programmers looking to formalize or extend their platform depth can go straight to the source at Yaskawa Motoman, whose controller lineage is exactly what this contract is asking for.
The Monday after
Picture it. The line ran all weekend. The cells came back clean. Nothing on the floor is waiting on you Monday morning, because you already handled it — and you drove home with the travel time still on the clock.
Two people get to be the reason that happened. The controllers in Greensburg are not going to learn to explain themselves, and the number of people who can speak their language is not going up. If you are one of them, this was written for you: the contract is right here.
And if you are not the one — you already know who is. Their name arrived while you were reading this. Send it to them.
More open work and industry writing lives on the Automate America news and contracts hub.
Frequently asked questions
What robot platform does this contract require?
Yaskawa/Motoman is mandatory, specifically the DX100, DX200, MRC and NX100 controllers. MRC and NX100 are older generations, which is a large part of why the role is hard to fill.
Where is it, and when does it start?
Greensburg, Indiana, on an automotive final-assembly line. It starts immediately and runs through the end of October.
What is the schedule?
Weekend work — 12-hour days, two days per week, with travel on Friday and Monday and the possibility of working some Mondays.
What does it pay, and are expenses covered?
$52.40 per hour, and travel time is paid at that same rate. There is a $70/day per diem that does not require receipts, a $130/day hotel allowance, and mileage reimbursement at $0.725 per mile.
How do I apply?
View and apply free on the contract page at Automate America. You can also be requested directly by companies searching the marketplace for a programmer with your controller background.
Tony Wallace, Co-Founder · Automate America · Text/Call 586-770-8083 · info@automateamerica.com
