Software Engineering Research Intern

Software Engineering Research Intern

Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories is seeking a Software Engineering Research Intern, to work with AI/ML and large language model technology to help develop tools, work instructions, assistive materials, and best-known methods for applying these technologies to the software development lifecycle.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Support SEL's software development processes by developing engineering-focused software tools.
• Implement developer-facing tooling for AI/ML tasks, agentic development, model training, etc.
• Provide support to, and collaboration with, engineering staff when the role demands.
• Follow engineering quality assurance procedures.
• Continuously identify, measure, and improve processes.
• Follow and apply SEL Values, Principles of Operations, and World Class Manufacturing Principles.
• Understand. Create. Simplify.
• Other duties as assigned.

Required Qualifications

• Current student pursuing a degree in computer science or equivalent with at least one year of technical coursework completed.
• Programming experience in C#, C++, Java, TypeScript, Python or equivalent programming language.
• Strong writing, documentation, and speaking skills.
• Ability to learn new skills and assume new responsibilities.
• Ability to deal with many rapid changes in your underlying technology stack, and not be intimidated by the fact that the subject matter is constantly evolving while you learn it.
• Ability to work cooperatively in a team environment, as well as partially self-guided research.
• Background check results satisfactory to SEL.
• Negative drug test result(s).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience using scripting languages, such as Python, Javascript, Perl, Ruby.
• Interest in machine learning and applied use of large language models.
• Prior familiarity with concepts like MCP, online vs offline model capabilities, agentic development and similar developer-focused AI topics will help accelerate your growth in the role.
• Some practical experience using code assistant AI. Experience using revision control and source code management systems such as git, and developer environment tooling like Visual Studio Code.

What You'll Learn

This is a research and prototyping position. You'll be working with a team of engineers with a mixed skill set and a direct supervisor who are attempting to increase the effectiveness of coding assistant and agentic development software within the company, and to help accelerate adoption.

As such you'll learn about concepts like MCP, the limitations of Large Language Models (LLM), efficient prompting, fine-tuning models, model runtime frameworks, cloud LLM offerings, and will likely get to work with 3 or more different LLM and ML scaffolding frameworks during your time.

By the end of your internship, you should be up to date with the state-of-the-art in applied AI in the domain of software engineering, and have a good working understanding of how to iterate in the space while the landscape keeps changing underneath you. This is an exciting time to work with this technology, but also a challenging time, and I look forward to working with an eager, inquisitive, learning focused intern.

Pay Range Data

($19.50 - $32.50 per hour) Our intern pay is determined based on the internship role and your year in school. Talk to your recruiter if you are curious about the rate for your year in school.