Electroless Ni–B coating films were developed using steel specimens with varying coating bath parameters to determine an optimum set of bath parameters for which the friction coefficient of the coated layers will be minimum. The parameter considered as response parameters is coefficient of friction. The control parameters are NiCl2, NaBH4 concentration as well as coating bath temperature in the limits of 10–30 g/l, 0.4–1.2 g/l and 75 °C–95 °C, respectively. The current investigation considers only three control parameters with five levels and the experimental combination was determined as per Taguchi’s L25 orthogonal array. The coefficient of friction of the as-deposited coated specimens was obtained through the experiments conducted in a multi-tribo tester. The recorded values of the coefficient of friction are further analysed using particle swarm optimization. The particle swarm optimization method provided a suitable combination of parameters which is expected to provide the minimum friction coefficient value under the current study. The surface morphology of the coatings is examined using a scanning electron microscope and the chemical composition of the coatings is analysed using Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis. The characterization results are in well agreement with the optimization results.