Undergraduate/Graduate (Year-Round) Intern - Transportation Research Software Engineering

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

2d

About The Position

NLR is located at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Golden, Colorado is the nation's primary laboratory for energy systems research and development. Join the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR), where world-class scientists, engineers, and experts are accelerating energy innovation through breakthrough research and systems integration. From our mission to our collaborative culture, NLR stands out in the research community for its commitment to an affordable and secure energy future. Spanning foundational science to applied systems engineering and analysis, we focus on solving complex challenges to deliver advanced, secure, reliable, and cost-effective energy solutions. Our work helps strengthen U.S. industries, support job creation, and promote national economic growth. At NLR, you'll find a mission-driven environment supported by state-of-the-art facilities, multidisciplinary research teams, and strong collaborations with industry, academia, and other national laboratories. We offer robust professional development opportunities, and a competitive benefits package designed to support your career and well-being. Seeking full- or part-time graduate or highly qualified undergraduate candidates to join the NLR Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences. We are looking for candidates passionate about software development, code optimization, and reproducible science to engineer the next generation of modeling tools. You will work alongside domain researchers to professionalize codebases, build scalable data pipelines, and develop robust frameworks that quantify the implications of emerging transportation technologies.

Requirements

• Minimum of a 3.0 cumulative grade point average.
• Undergraduate: Must be enrolled as a full-time student in a bachelor’s degree program from an accredited institution.
• Post Undergraduate: Earned a bachelor’s degree within the past 12 months. Eligible for an internship period of up to one year.
• Graduate: Must be enrolled as a full-time student in a master’s degree program from an accredited institution.
• Post Graduate: Earned a master’s degree within the past 12 months. Eligible for an internship period of up to one year.
• Graduate + PhD: Completed master’s degree and enrolled as PhD student from an accredited institution.
• Please Note: • Applicants are responsible for uploading official or unofficial school transcripts, as part of the application process. • If selected for position, a letter of recommendation will be required as part of the hiring process. • Must meet educational requirements prior to employment start date. Must meet educational requirements prior to employment start date.
• 1-2 years of programming experience.

Nice To Haves

• Highest priority preferred qualifications: Rust & Python Proficiency: Strong skills in Python for orchestration, with experience in (or a strong desire to learn) Rust for performance-critical tasks.
• Engineering Best Practices: Practical experience with Git collaboration, automated unit testing (pytest, cargo test), and CI/CD pipelines.
• High-Performance Data: Ability to write memory-efficient code for large datasets using modern tools like Polars, PySpark, or Dask.
• Model Implementation: Skill in translating mathematical concepts and research logic into optimized, modular software components.
• Technical Documentation: Ability to write clear, developer-focused documentation (e.g., API docs, READMEs) rather than just general reports.
• Additional preferred qualifications: Cumulative undergraduate/graduate GPA over 3.5 on a 4.0 scale. Please include all relevant experience and qualification information on the uploaded PDF (or MS Word) copy of your resume or CV.

Responsibilities

• Engineer Research Software: Collaborate with researchers to translate complex transportation energy concepts into robust, modular, and maintainable software libraries; focus on refactoring legacy scripts into production-grade tools.
• Build Scalable Data Pipelines: Architect and implement high-performance computing (HPC) workflows to ingest, clean, and process large-scale geospatial and mobility datasets efficiently.
• Optimize Existing Tools: Enhance the performance and reliability of existing tools and models; implement parallelization strategies, improve memory management, and ensure code scalability.
• Ensure Software Quality: Champion software engineering best practices within the research team, including implementing unit/integration testing, setting up CI/CD pipelines, and managing version control (Git) workflows.
• Documentation & Dissemination: create comprehensive technical documentation (e.g., Sphinx, ReadTheDocs) for developed tools; assist in the technical writing for peer-reviewed publications regarding model architecture and computational methods.

Benefits

• Benefits include medical, dental, and vision insurance; 403(b) Employee Savings Plan with employer match; and sick leave (where required by law).
• NLR employees may be eligible for, but are not guaranteed, performance-, merit-, and achievement- based awards that include a monetary component.
• Some positions may be eligible for relocation expense reimbursement.
• Internships projected to be less than 20 hours per week are not eligible for medical, dental, or vision benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Part-time
• Career Level: Intern