How to Structure an FRC Team: Subteams, Roles, and Leadership

A great robot rarely comes from one genius working alone. It comes from a team where dozens of students each own a slice of the problem, hand work off cleanly, and pull in the same direction under a deadline. The good news: you do not need to invent your structure from scratch. FIRST and successful teams have converged on a handful of patterns that work, and you can adopt them on day one. This guide walks through the common subteams, how students lead, what mentors actually do, how the calendar shapes your meetings, and how to make sure your hard-won knowledge survives graduation.

The two halves of every team

FIRST's official How To: Organize a Team guide suggests starting with two big groups and subdividing from there: the robot side and the logistics side (sometimes called the team side or non-technical side). The robot side builds the machine. The logistics side keeps the team funded, documented, recruited, and known in the community. Both matter. A robot with no sponsors does not get to competition, and a flush bank account with no robot does not win matches.

You do not need every subteam below. A rookie team of fifteen students might run a single "build" group and a single "business" group. A 60-student team might split each of these five ways. Pick the structure your leadership can actually support, and merge subteams when you are short on people.

The robot-side subteams

Design / CAD

The Design subteam (often called CAD) turns the team's prototypes and decisions into a 3D model that serves as the blueprint for fabrication. Most FRC teams CAD in Onshape or Autodesk Inventor, and a strong reference for learning is FRCDesign.org. Designers think in terms of mechanisms, tolerances, and how parts bolt together before anyone cuts metal. If your team uses 3D printing or CNC, this group usually owns the manufacturing files too. Learn more in our CAD and design track.

Mechanical / Build

The Mechanical subteam (also "build") fabricates and assembles the robot. Early in the season they prototype end effectors and mechanisms; once the design is locked, they machine, cut, and assemble the real parts. This is where mills, lathes, drill presses, and a lot of deburring live. Our mechanical build track covers gearboxes, drivetrains, and manipulators.

Electrical

The Electrical subteam is the bridge between mechanical and programming. They wire the robot: the power distribution board, motor controllers, the roboRIO, the radio, breakers, and sensors, all laid out so the board is safe and serviceable. Clean wiring is not cosmetic; a loose connection is a match you lose. See our electrical track for wiring standards and component selection.

Programming

The Programming subteam writes the code that connects driver controls to motors and sensors. Most teams use WPILib in Java or C++, increasingly with the command-based framework, and tools like PathPlanner for autonomous paths and PhotonVision or Limelight for vision. They own both the autonomous routines and the teleop control logic. Dive into our programming track.

The logistics-side subteams

Business / Finance

The Business subteam manages the budget, writes the business plan, recruits and stewards sponsors, and tracks expenses. They are why your team can afford a swerve drive and a trip to a regional.

Outreach / Community

The Outreach subteam extends the team's impact beyond itself: running events, mentoring younger FIRST teams, and spreading STEM in the community. This work is the backbone of award submissions, including the FIRST Impact Award (called the Chairman's Award through the 2022 season), the most prestigious honor in the program.

Communications / Media

Often split from business on larger teams, the Communications/Audio-Visual group handles the website, social media, newsletters, photography, video, and award essays. They document the season so the outreach story can actually be told.

Strategy / Scouting

The Strategy subteam reads the game manual closely, runs mock matches to shape the robot's priorities, and at competition gathers and analyzes data on every team. That scouting data drives one of the highest-leverage decisions of the event: which partners to pick during alliance selection.

The drive team: a special case

The drive team is not a year-round subteam so much as the small crew that operates the robot at competition, and its size is capped by the rules. In recent seasons the FRC game manual has defined a drive team of up to five members — a mix of DRIVERS, a DRIVE COACH, a TECHNICIAN, and HUMAN PLAYERS — with no more than one non-student among them. Because these limits and role labels can change year to year, always confirm the exact composition in the current game manual.

Pick drivers on merit and practice, not seniority. FIRST publishes a Selecting Drive Team Members guide that weighs talent against experience, communication, and composure, and Team 254 publicly shares its own driver selection criteria: consistency, composure under pressure, and willingness to drill matter more than raw reflexes.

Student leadership

FIRST recommends electing one or two team captains who supervise the whole team and relay between students and the head mentor. Beneath them, larger teams add robot and logistics managers who own the big picture for each half, freeing the subteam leads to focus on their specialty. Select leaders on merit and experience through an application, short essay, or interview, not a popularity contest. There is no single correct chart; the point is that every student knows who they report to and who depends on their work.

Mentor roles

Mentors guide; they do not build the robot for the students. Every team needs a Lead Coach/Mentor who is the adult of record with FIRST and shepherds the season. Beyond that, technical mentors coach individual subteams (a machinist for mechanical, a software engineer for programming), and non-technical mentors support business, outreach, and logistics.

Crucially, all coaches and mentors must complete FIRST's Youth Protection Program training and screening before working with students, and FIRST provides a structured Mentor Guide and onboarding pathway. Treat YPP compliance as non-negotiable.

Meeting cadence across the year

Your schedule should breathe with the season. A typical rhythm looks like this:

Kickoff lands on a Saturday in early January (it has fallen on the first or second Saturday depending on the year), so check the current season's calendar for the exact date. One important correction to outdated advice: FRC no longer has a six-week "stop build day." FIRST retired bag-and-tag for the 2020 season (see FIRST's 2020 rule-change announcement), so teams may now keep working on the robot from kickoff right up to their first event. You can still structure your effort around six intense weeks if that suits you, but you are no longer forced to.

Onboarding rookies and training

New members are the team's future, so make their first weeks count. Use the calm preseason to run hands-on training: a "rookie robot" or an old competition bot is a perfect sandbox for teaching wiring, basic CAD, and a first WPILib deploy without the pressure of a real deadline. FIRST's guide suggests having students apply to their top three subteam choices, which balances the groups and keeps everyone engaged rather than letting one subteam swell while another starves.

Documentation and sustainability

The single biggest threat to an FRC team is graduation. Seniors leave and take their knowledge with them unless you write it down. Build a habit of documentation: an engineering notebook, a shared drive of CAD and code, wiring diagrams, and a team handbook covering norms, safety, and expectations (FIRST links example team management resources). Use a communication platform like Discord, Slack, or Google Classroom with per-subteam channels so information is searchable, not trapped in one person's memory. A team that documents well can survive a rough year, rebuild, and come back stronger.

Ready to find your spot on the team? Explore every subteam's skills in the LearnFRC guides hub.