Mark Rober

Yes — Mark Rober spent approximately nine years as a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he worked on the Mars Science Laboratory mission that delivered the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012. That hands-on experience building hardware for interplanetary missions is the cornerstone of his credibility and directly informs the technically ambitious projects he takes on for his YouTube channel.

CrunchLabs is Mark Rober's engineering education subscription company that ships a monthly hands-on build kit directly to your home, paired with a video where Rober walks you through constructing it. The stated goal is to teach kids and curious adults to think like engineers — each project is built around a real mechanical or scientific concept rather than just snapping pieces together.

Starting in 2018, Mark Rober engineered a booby-trapped fake package designed specifically to catch porch pirates — people who steal deliveries from front doorsteps. When opened, the device launched a cloud of fine glitter, deployed fart spray, and captured the thieves' reactions on hidden cameras. He released multiple increasingly elaborate versions over the following years, and the series ranks among the most-watched videos on his channel.

Yes — beyond his well-known time at NASA, Mark Rober lists himself as a former Apple engineer in his Instagram bio. He worked at Apple after leaving NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory before eventually going full-time as a creator, giving him a rare dual background spanning aerospace engineering and consumer technology.

Mark Rober completed his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at Brigham Young University (BYU) and then earned a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Southern California (USC). That formal training is what qualified him for NASA JPL and forms the foundation for the technically rigorous builds he demonstrates on his channel.

Yes — in his video "Ronaldo vs My Unbeatable Goalie Robot," Mark Rober built a robotic goalkeeper engineered to be extraordinarily difficult to beat and put Cristiano Ronaldo up against it in a penalty shootout challenge. It's one of his most high-profile celebrity collaborations and combines his signature large-scale engineering builds with one of the most famous footballers on the planet.

Mark Rober spent months engineering an elaborate multi-stage obstacle course in his backyard to test whether squirrels could solve increasingly difficult puzzles to reach a walnut reward — and they could. The video became one of YouTube's most-watched uploads of 2020, turning a backyard wildlife observation into a full-scale behavioral science and engineering experiment.

In his video "How to Escape Alcatraz With Basic Engineering," Mark Rober applies real mechanical and materials engineering principles to analyze whether escaping the famous maximum-security island prison would actually be feasible using improvised tools and limited resources. It's a format he returns to regularly — taking a famous real-world challenge and stress-testing it with genuine engineering rigor.

Mark Rober has worked with major brands including T-Mobile, Adobe, Tide, Rivian, LEGO, the NFL, and Google, alongside integrations for his own company CrunchLabs. His audience skews overwhelmingly toward science-curious males in the 18–34 age range, which makes him a particularly in-demand partner for technology, automotive, and consumer product brands seeking credibility with that demographic.

Mark Rober's YouTube channel has surpassed 78 million subscribers, placing him firmly in the Mega tier and making him one of the largest science and engineering channels on the entire platform. His audience is primarily based in the United States, with substantial viewership also coming from the United Kingdom and Canada.