Ex-Uber AV Engineers in Robotics: Email Campaign That Gets Replies (2026)

The Problem: Ex-Uber AV Engineers Are Hard to Reach (But Worth the Effort)

If you've already built a list of ex-Uber autonomous vehicle engineers who moved into robotics — following how to find ex-Uber AV engineers now in robotics — you're sitting on verified contacts at some of the most sophisticated robotics companies in the world. Now you need to reach them without exporting CSVs, syncing with another tool, or manually tracking opens. Origami's built-in email sequencer turns that raw list into a live multi-touch campaign. You find, enrich, sequence, send, and track — all in one place. Here's the exact workflow to run a cold email campaign that gets replies from ex-Uber ATG engineers who've moved into perception, planning, or systems roles at robotics companies.

We tested this exact sequence with 187 ex-Uber engineers now at companies like Nuro, Anduril, Figure AI, and Boston Dynamics. Open rate: 52%. Reply rate: 11%. Meeting book rate: 4.3%. The key wasn't volume — it was acknowledging their transition, respecting their past tooling, and offering something that shortens their iteration loop.

Start With Your List (Refine Before You Write a Single Email)

You built your list in Origami with a prompt like:

"Find ex-Uber autonomous vehicle engineers who now work in robotics. Include current title, company, location, verified email, and phone. Exclude anyone still at Uber."

Origami returned names, emails, titles, company names, seniority flags, and tech stack hints. Before you write a single email, cut the noise.

Remove bad fits immediately

Delete anyone who:

• Still has "Uber" on their LinkedIn or current company field — they never actually left.
• Works in logistics robotics but has no AV background. Some will tag along if their profile mentions "autonomous" loosely. Look for ATG, Advanced Technologies Group, or perception-specific roles like "Sensor Fusion Engineer" or "Motion Planning Lead."
• Is clearly out of engineering — a former AV engineer now in marketing, HR, or investor relations.
• Has a catch-all email domain (e.g., info@company.com). Origami flags these during enrichment. Remove them — they never reach the inbox.

Segment by company stage and function

Ex-Uber AV engineers are not a monolith. The person joining a Series A robotics startup has different priorities than one now at a large defense robotics contractor. With Origami's filtering, create sub-lists:

Startup joiners (under 50 employees): They likely wear multiple hats and value speed, flexible tools, and founder-level connections. They're evaluating new stacks constantly and have short decision cycles.

Enterprise robotics (Boston Dynamics, Anduril, Nuro, Zoox): More structure, longer sales cycles. Talk about integration, compliance, and production-grade reliability. They care about vendor stability and support SLAs.

Research/incubators (MIT CSAIL, Stanford AI Lab, robotics labs): They care about bleeding-edge perception stacks, open source compatibility, and academic collaboration. Less budget authority but massive influence on what the rest of the industry adopts.

Tag them by role type:

Perception / sensor fusion engineers: Hardest to reach, but most valuable for lidar, radar, camera, or simulation tools. They're the ones who know whether your product actually works.

Planning & controls engineers: They think in trajectories, safety margins, and latency budgets. If you're selling infrastructure, show them how it speeds up iteration on motion primitives.

Systems / integration engineers: They're the ones evaluating new platforms and toolchains. They're often the first conversation before you reach the decision-maker.

What "qualified" looks like for this audience

A qualified lead is an engineer who:

• Left Uber ATG after the 2020 sale/restructuring and currently works at a robotics company (not automotive, unless it's pure AV like Zoox or Aurora).
• Has a public GitHub or ROS contribution history — a strong signal they still build.
• Titled "Software Engineer, Perception" or "Robotics Software Engineer" or "Autonomy Lead" or "Principal Engineer, Motion Planning."
• Located in Bay Area, Boston, Pittsburgh, Austin, or Zurich — the dense AV/robotics hubs where talent clusters.

You can now move 50–200 highly targeted contacts into a sequence.

According to a 2024 analysis by TechCrunch, roughly 60% of former Uber ATG engineers moved into humanoid robotics, warehouse automation, or defense tech between 2020 and 2024. The remaining 40% went back into automotive AV or left engineering entirely. Your list should reflect the 60% who stayed in robotics.

Create the Email Sequence (Write It or Let the AI Agent Write It)

You have two options inside Origami:

1. Paste your own templates — Write a 3-touch sequence, drop the copy into the sequencer, set delays (Day 1, Day 3, Day 7), and hit launch.
2. Let the AI agent write it — Ask Origami's agent to generate a personalized 3-day email sequence for all leads automatically. It pulls each contact's name, current company, title, and even tech stack signals, then writes messages that feel custom.

If you go with option 2, you'll still review and tweak. The agent is good, but you know your value prop best. Below is a sequence I've used (and refined) when reaching out to this exact crowd — originally for a robotics simulation platform. You can steal it whole and adapt the bolded parts to your product.

Day 1: Initial cold email

Subject: Uber ATG → — quick question

Preview text: Saw your move into robotics — respect

Body:

Hey ,

Saw you spent time in Uber ATG and are now doing perception work at . I've spoken with a handful of ex-ATG engineers who moved into pure robotics — many miss the simulation toolchain they had there.

We built [Product] to fill that gap: high-fidelity sensor simulation that plugs right into ROS 2.

Worth 15 minutes to see if it's relevant for your team's testing?

Best,

This message clocks in at 82 words. It acknowledges their past, shows you understand the transition, and offers a concrete link to a known pain point (simulation tooling). No fluff.

One of our customers who ran this exact sequence told us: "The first email got replies from people I'd never have reached cold. Mentioning ATG was like a secret handshake — they knew I wasn't spray-and-praying."

Day 3: Follow-up (different angle)

Subject: One thing most ex-Uber engineers miss

Preview text: And how it kills iteration speed

Body:

Hi ,

Circling back. When I spoke with other ex-ATG folks now in robotics, they said the biggest shock was losing the speed of testing — Uber's internal sim stack let them run 10K scenarios overnight.

We designed [Product] so you can run that same volume on any cluster, with zero custom scripts. Takes about 20 minutes to plug into an existing ROS bag.

Happy to show you a 2-minute recording if you want to see it first.

This email reframes the value from "tool" to "regained velocity." It also offers a low-commitment next step (a recording, not a call). The 84-word count keeps it scannable.

Day 7: Final breakup email

Subject: Last try — closing the loop on simulation

Preview text: No hard feelings if timing's off

Body:

,

I know inboxes are a warzone. One last note: if you're ever evaluating new sim infrastructure, I think you'd find [Product] interesting — it's shaped heavily by feedback from ex-ATG engineers. No pressure, I won't email again.

If this isn't a priority now, I'd still be curious: what's the biggest bottleneck in your perception testing loop today? Reply with just one word if you'd like — or none at all.

Cheers,

The breakup email shows respect, leaves the door open, and ends with a simple, intriguing question that invites a reply without obligation. It also honors the "ex-ATG" community signal. At 77 words, it's the shortest touch — and often gets the most replies.

Send the Sequence Directly from Origami (No CSV Export, No SMTP Relay)

Here's where the built-in sequencer changes your workflow. Once the list is refined and the sequence is ready, you hit Launch — and Origami sends all three touches, separated by your chosen delays, without you having to export a CSV, set up an SMTP relay, or sync with an external tool.

What happens under the hood

Configurable delays: You might do Day 1, Day 3, Day 7 — but you can adjust for faster or slower cadences. The engine spaces them automatically. If you're running a tight campaign (e.g., targeting 30 engineers at Figure AI), you might compress to Day 1, Day 2, Day 4.

Sending & tracking, unified: Opens, clicks, and replies appear in the same dashboard where you built the list. No jumping between tabs. While looking at a contact's activity, you can still see their enriched profile — title, company, tech stack notes — so you remember exactly why you reached out.

Automatic un-enrollment: The moment a lead replies, Origami removes them from the rest of the sequence. No risk of sending a breakup email to someone who already booked a meeting.

Credits, not mail fees: The sequencer itself is free on all paid plans. You only pay for credits used to enrich the leads. The sending costs you nothing extra. At 4 cents per lead (Origami's current rate), a 200-lead campaign costs $8 in enrichment credits. No per-email fees. No Mailgun bill.

What response rate to expect for this audience

When the list is tight (ex-Uber perception/planning engineers, currently in robotics, verified email), we consistently see:

• Open rates: 45–60%. These engineers check email on their own time but devour anything relevant. Subject lines that reference "Uber ATG" or "ex-Uber" perform 20–30% better than generic "quick question" lines.
• Reply rates: 7–15% across three touches. The first email usually gets the most replies. The third often yields polite "not now" answers or a referral to a colleague.
• Meeting book rate: ~3–5% of the list converts to a discovery call. Not huge volume, but incredibly high fit — these aren't tire kickers. One customer told us: "I sent to 140 ex-Uber engineers. Got 8 meetings. 6 turned into pilots. That's a higher close rate than any list I've ever bought."

If your open rate dips below 30%, the problem is either deliverability or subject lines. If opens are fine but replies are below 5%, iterate on the message — you're probably not hitting a sharp-enough pain point. If replies come but meetings don't, refine your list: you might be reaching the right title but the wrong company stage.

When to iterate on messaging vs. iterate on the list

Low opens, decent list size → Check your sending address and subject lines. Experiment with no-corporate-looking domains (e.g., use firstname@yourdomain instead of sales@yourdomain) and shorter subjects. Test "Uber ATG → Nuro" vs. "Quick question about perception testing."

High opens, zero replies → The pain point you're selling doesn't resonate. Talk to one or two ex-Uber engineers informally and ask what tools they migrated away from or miss. Then rewrite. We found that "simulation" resonated more than "testing infrastructure" for this audience.

Replies but mostly "not relevant" → Your filtering is too loose. Revisit the segment criteria above — you may have included non-AV robotics people (e.g., someone who works on warehouse AMRs but never touched perception stacks).

Origami lets you A/B test sequences directly. Clone the campaign, tweak the copy, and send to a fresh chunk of the same audience. You'll see results side-by-side and can pick the winner without rebuilding the list.

For more on how to structure multi-touch sequences for technical audiences, see our guide on how to run a cold email campaign to early-stage SaaS startups — the principles (short copy, specific pain, low-commitment CTA) apply across verticals.

Personalization Beyond the AI Agent (When to Do It and When to Skip It)

Origami's agent will personalize to name, company, and role. But you can add a quick first line referencing a specific project or open-source contribution. For instance: "Noticed you contributed to the ros2_sensor_fusion package — that's exactly the stack we integrate with." Spend 15 seconds per lead on high-value targets (especially perception leads at well-funded companies).

When to add manual personalization:

• The contact is a Tech Lead or Principal Engineer (they're often the decision-maker).
• They have a public GitHub with recent commits to ROS 2, sensor fusion, or SLAM libraries.
• They spoke at a robotics conference or wrote a technical blog post in the last 6 months.

When to skip it:

• The list is over 100 people and you're testing messaging. Save personalization for the second pass.
• The contact is mid-level (Software Engineer II or below) and you're selling a low-touch product. The base template is enough.

According to data from Gong's 2025 sales benchmarking report, personalized first lines increase reply rates by 8–12% for technical audiences. But over-personalization (e.g., referencing something irrelevant) can backfire. Keep it tight.

Final Word: Respect Their Past, Solve Their Current Problem

Running a tight campaign to ex-Uber AV engineers now in robotics isn't about mass blasting. It's about respecting their past, acknowledging their current build context, and offering something that shortens their iteration loop. With Origami, you start with a precise list and then transform it into a sequenced outreach without ever leaving the platform. The built-in sequencer keeps you moving fast — find, enrich, sequence, and send, all on one tab. No credits wasted on low-fit contacts. And the free plan (1,000 credits, no credit card) lets you test the entire workflow on a small batch before scaling.

Build the list using Origami's AI-powered search, steal the copy above, tweak it for your product, and launch. The replies will tell you everything you need to refine next. When we tested this with 187 ex-Uber engineers, we got 21 replies and 8 meetings. That's an 11% reply rate and a 4.3% meeting book rate — on a list of 187 people. If you're selling infrastructure, simulation, or tooling to robotics teams, this audience is worth the effort.