My First Contract in Robotics: 10 Days in Zürich

Some decisions are made with data. Others are made with your gut. Moving to Switzerland fresh out of university — no job confirmed, thesis still warm — was the second kind.

I arrived in Dietikon, fifteen minutes from Zürich by train, on 20 August. On 31 August I signed my first contract. In between: ten days that taught me more about the robotics job market than the two months I had spent searching from Spain.

The unintentional experiment
I did not plan it as an experiment, but the data turned it into one.

From Spain, I applied to more than 50 positions in the robotics and AI sector over two months. Carefully crafted applications, targeted cover letters, direct messages to founders and CTOs. I got one reply — to a speculative application I had sent directly by email.

In Switzerland, I applied to 13 positions in the first week. Two replied. One became a contract.

The CV was the same. The strategy was the same. The technical profile was the same. The only thing that had changed was the address and the phone number. A Swiss one.

Why being here matters
The answer is simpler than it sounds, and nobody tells you before you live it.

Swiss recruiters will not bet on someone who is not already here when they can choose someone who is. It is not discrimination or bureaucracy. It is operational logic: if a startup needs someone to start on Monday, it cannot wait for someone to cross the border, find a flat and sort out their permits.

Being physically in Switzerland puts you in a completely different category of candidate. Not better on paper — but more accessible, more immediate, more real to whoever is reading your application on the other side of the screen.

The Saturday that changed everything
On a Saturday afternoon, lying in bed scrolling LinkedIn, a notification appeared. A drone company in Zürich was looking for someone to start that same Monday.

I emailed them that afternoon. Sunday morning I had the interview. Monday I started.

That 48-hour process would not have been possible from Spain. Or from any other country. It only works when you are already here — when the recruiter knows there is no friction between the "yes" and the first day of work.

What the Swiss market demands
There is something the robotics and AI ecosystem in Zürich makes clear from the very first moment: the bar is high. Not in the sense that they ask for impossible experience, but in the sense that they know exactly what they want and have no time to waste.

Most positions ask for a master's or a PhD. Many also require years of experience in C++, ROS2 or specific frameworks. Applying with just a bachelor's degree to those roles is an uphill battle, and you need to know that going in.

But there is also something nobody tells you: when the project behind the CV is solid and real, the credentials matter less than the job description makes them seem. Not always. Not with every company. But it happens.

What never fails is networking. I had a call of nearly half an hour with an engineer from an ETH Zürich spin-off — no open positions, just a conversation about my thesis and sim-to-real. That kind of conversation opens doors that no web form ever can.

The first step
The contract was for two weeks. I worked on software validation for drones, at a startup in the centre of Zürich. Short, intense, and more valuable than any number on a contract can reflect.

Because the first step in a new market is not the biggest one. It is the hardest. And once it is taken, the next one is different.

The process continues. This is only the beginning.