Robotics Software Intern, Manipulation & Simulation

Valstad•Austin, TX

4d•$34 - $42•Onsite

About The Position

Valstad is rebuilding how ships are made. American shipbuilding is constrained by slow, labor-intensive production methods and a shortage of skilled manufacturing capacity. We are developing robotic production systems that can turn engineering data directly into finished steel structures, dramatically reducing the time and manual programming required to build ships. Our first platform combines industrial robots, automated material handling, welding, sensing and AI-driven manufacturing software to produce large ship panels and structural assemblies. Instead of programming each new part by hand, our goal is for the system to understand the CAD model, determine how the structure should be assembled and welded, and generate the robotic plan required to build it. Achieving that requires solving difficult robotics problems involving kinematics, coordinate frames, motion planning, simulation, calibration, collision checking, sensor integration and execution on real industrial hardware. The software you build will be tested against full-scale industrial robots in our Austin facility, not only in simulation.

Requirements

Currently pursuing a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral degree in robotics, computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, aerospace engineering or a related field.
Strong programming fundamentals.
Experience with Python, rust or both.
Coursework or practical experience in linear algebra, three-dimensional geometry, kinematics, dynamics, controls or motion planning.
Experience completing a meaningful robotics, software or research project.
Ability to reason about technical systems and debug unexpected behavior.
Ability to work independently within a defined project scope.
Strong written and verbal communication skills.
Interest in robotic manipulation and real-world industrial systems.
Availability to work full-time and on-site in Austin for the duration of the internship.

Nice To Haves

Strong rust experience.
Experience with ROS or ROS 2.
Experience with MoveIt, Tesseract, OMPL, Drake, MuJoCo, Isaac Sim, Gazebo or another robotics framework.
Experience with forward and inverse kinematics.
Experience with homogeneous transformations, quaternions and coordinate-frame conventions.
Experience with collision detection or motion planning.
Experience working with robotic manipulators.
Experience with Eigen, NumPy or similar numerical libraries.
Experience developing simulation or verification tools.
Experience with industrial robot arms, linear rails or external axes.
Experience with robot calibration, hand-eye calibration or sensor localization.
Experience working with cameras, laser scanners, force-torque sensors or other robotics hardware.
Participation in a robotics laboratory, student robotics team, Formula SAE, combat robotics or relevant open-source project.

Responsibilities

Design and implement a scoped robotics-software project.
Work with rust, Python or both.
Use simulation and recorded data to test your work.
Work with rigid-body transformations, robot kinematics and 3D geometry where relevant.
Build automated tests for nominal and failure scenarios.
Participate in robotics architecture discussions and code reviews.
Analyze logs and robot behavior to diagnose planning or execution issues.
Validate your work using real robotic hardware when appropriate and under supervision.
Document assumptions, algorithms, interfaces and limitations.
Present your results and demonstrate the completed capability to the Valstad team.