My statement for custom machines / robotic programming:
I'd rather hire ME or EE who is interested in automation & teach them how to program than hire a CS guy who is interested in programming only. In fact, I've already seen one ME become a successful embedded programmer (in Perl and C/C++).

OTOH, if you are a good programming, such as Todd, and do have the interest in the end result, then you should do quite well.

For factory automation, another requirement is the ability to deal with the vendors' favorite programming languages, which vary from horrible (PLC code done wrong, Animatics, Galil, & most other motion control vendors) to OK (PLC done right -- and the Euro standard (IEC 61131) is a big improvement) to decent (e.g. Adept, C, VB). Fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time writing Python code.

Frankly, having experience with more dynamic languages (e.g. Smalltalk, Python) is a big plus; I know after using Python I'll program in C/C++ better.

My understanding is that in the overall embedded marked (e.g. stuff using RTOS or on small, memory limited systems) C & C++ are the dominant languages.

We hopefully will be hiring one programmer this quarter, but not yet (and to be honest, people with a strong connection to the current employees have an edge).

In any case, good luck.

Tony