Hardware Intern

Meter•San Francisco, CA

1d•$25 - $40

About The Position

Meter is seeking Hardware Engineering Interns to address technical challenges within its hardware engineering and operations teams. This 12-week internship offers the opportunity to lead a well-defined project tailored to the intern's interests, experience, and Meter's needs. Potential project areas include: * **Next-generation power adapters:** Prototyping efficient and compact power supplies for future Meter products, involving architecture selection, component evaluation, thermal performance, efficiency, reliability, product design, and cost analysis. * **Hardware lifecycle and sustainability:** Investigating methods for reusing, refurbishing, donating, disassembling, or recycling Meter products at the end of their life, assessing technical and economic feasibility. * **Installer hardware and tooling:** Designing and prototyping custom hardware, tools, fixtures, or diagnostic devices to simplify the installation, servicing, and troubleshooting of Meter networks. * **Acoustics and thermal systems:** Developing and characterizing cooling solutions for high-performance networking and data center products, focusing on airflow, acoustics, reliability, power consumption, and mechanical constraints. * **Supply chain intelligence:** Analyzing Meter’s component and supply-chain data to identify risks such as long-lead components, concentration risks, and potential bottlenecks. This is a hands-on engineering role where interns will collaborate with Meter engineers, operators, suppliers, and manufacturing partners to understand problems, evaluate solutions, build and test prototypes, analyze results, and propose future actions. Success is measured by taking ownership of a hardware problem and driving it to an evidence-backed recommendation, potentially through building and validating prototypes, characterizing new technologies, qualifying suppliers, developing tools, uncovering supply chain risks, or creating implementable processes. Interns are expected to leave behind tangible assets like data, prototypes, test results, engineering requirements, supplier evaluations, tools, or technical recommendations. By the end of the internship, participants should be able to articulate their investigation, testing methods, learnings, engineering tradeoffs, and future recommendations for Meter.

Requirements

Pursuing a degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, manufacturing engineering, industrial engineering, supply chain, or another related technical field
Enjoy taking ambiguous technical problems and breaking them into questions you can answer through engineering and experimentation
Experience building, testing, debugging, or taking apart hardware, or are eager to learn
Comfortable getting hands-on with physical systems, whether that means PCBAs, mechanical assemblies, test equipment, prototypes, manufacturing data, or supplier samples
Ability to use data to make engineering decisions rather than relying solely on intuition
Comfortable learning things you have never encountered before and asking questions when you don’t understand something
Ability to communicate technical findings clearly and turn your work into recommendations that others can act on

Nice To Haves

Experience with networking hardware, electronics, embedded systems, PCB design, CAD, manufacturing, thermal design, acoustics, data analysis, supply chain, or hardware lifecycle engineering

Responsibilities

Design, build, and test electrical or mechanical prototypes for future Meter products
Evaluate components, technologies, architectures, materials, and suppliers
Develop test plans and characterize performance, reliability, thermals, acoustics, power, or other system-level behavior
Work directly with networking hardware, PCBAs, mechanical assemblies, test equipment, and manufacturing samples
Analyze manufacturing, component, or supply chain data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities
Work with overseas suppliers and manufacturing partners to understand technical capabilities, constraints, cost, and scalability
Explore sustainability, repairability, refurbishment, component reuse, recycling, and other hardware lifecycle opportunities
Work cross-functionally with hardware engineering, supply chain, operations, software, product, finance, and other teams
Present your findings and recommendations to the Hardware team at the end of the internship