Exploring Internship Opportunities at Gecko Robotics: A Comprehensive Overview
For students navigating the complex landscape of career choices, internships offer invaluable real-world experience and a bridge between academic knowledge and industry practices. Gecko Robotics, with its mission "To protect today's critical infrastructure, and give form to tomorrow's," provides a compelling environment for students seeking to contribute to the future of technology. This article delves into the internship opportunities available at Gecko Robotics, highlighting the experiences offered, the company culture, and the potential for professional development.
Bridging the Gap: Gecko Robotics and the Next Generation
Deciding on a career path can be daunting, especially when young individuals are presented with numerous options but lack practical information or experience. Gecko Robotics actively addresses this challenge by fostering connections between students and industry professionals. Relatability is enhanced when the age gap between students and professionals is smaller, making these interactions more impactful.
Gecko Robotics demonstrates its commitment to nurturing young talent through various initiatives. One example is hosting events that engage students in hands-on STEM curriculum. These events often include participants from programs like BotsIQ, a manufacturing workforce development program aimed at providing a pathway for youth to explore rewarding career options in manufacturing. Another participating group is L.A.U.N.C.H., a Pittsburgh Technology Council/Fortyx80 program designed to transform the natural curiosity of high school girls into leadership in the STEM industry.
These collaborative events typically feature office tours, robot demonstrations, and networking opportunities with Gecko Robotics employees. During a summer visit, students had the chance to interact with interns and learn about their summer projects. These conversations allowed students to relate to the interns and explore the curiosities of the tech world. For instance, an 8th-grade student discovered a shared interest in Python programming with an intern, sparking a discussion about coding robots for the BotsIQ competition.
Why Intern at Gecko Robotics?
Choosing the right internship can significantly impact a student's professional trajectory. Gecko Robotics offers several compelling reasons to consider an internship with their company:
Read also: Requirements for Robotics Engineers
Positive Employee Sentiment
While employee happiness can vary across any organization, Gecko Robotics fosters a positive work environment where employees report being engaged and connected. Employees at Gecko Robotics express that they’re never bored at work. Additionally, 100% have developed close friendships with their co-workers.
Professional Development
Internships are a crucial starting point for professional development. Gecko Robotics recognizes this and emphasizes providing opportunities for growth. Working at a company with strong professional development is beneficial, and Gecko Robotics seems to prioritize this aspect.
Impactful Work
Gecko Robotics is dedicated to ensuring the availability, reliability, and sustainability of critical infrastructure. Interns have the chance to contribute to this mission by working on projects that directly impact the efficiency and safety of operations, promote mission readiness, and protect the environment.
Mechanical Engineer Internship: A Closer Look
For students pursuing a degree in Mechanical Engineering or related fields, Gecko Robotics offers a Mechanical Engineer Intern position. This role provides a hands-on, project-based experience that allows interns to immerse themselves in the cycles of designing, building, and testing.
Role at a Glance
The Mechanical Engineer Intern designs product applications and assemblies with multidisciplinary project teams. The position is responsible for designing, developing, implementing, and supporting highly complex engineering projects associated with Gecko’s robotic fleet. This isn't a sideline experience; you'll work alongside our current full-time engineers on meaningful tasks, contributing to the development of impactful products. A substantial part of the experience will be spent in our 10,000 sq ft lab space which is equipped with everything you need to develop, build and test these projects.
Read also: Robotics at the University of Michigan
What You Will Do
As a Mechanical Engineer Intern, you will:
- Work closely with a multi-disciplinary team to design precision electro-mechanical systems.
- Troubleshoot problems in manufacturing, assembly, and field-use of components; analyze test data and reports to determine if designs meet functional and performance specifications.
- Create detailed drawings and drafting of fixtures, mechanical parts and assemblies, and other components.
- Prepare product and user documentation.
- Actively participate in assembly design, from concept to detail design to manufacturing introduction.
- Iterate on detailed mechanical design for a wide range of production fabrication processes in order to optimize performance and cost.
- Support creating, managing, releasing, and maintaining BOM’s.
- Mechanical modeling, simulation and testing of components.
- Validation of components in system configuration.
- Coordinate with software and electrical engineers to ensure that all requirements are met.
- Collaborate with manufacturing engineers and suppliers to transition concepts to production.
Required and Preferred Skills
To be eligible for the Mechanical Engineer Intern position, candidates should possess the following:
- Progress toward B.S. degree or beyond in Mechanical Engineering or related fields graduating.
- Knowledge of mechanical engineering fundamentals and tools, including FEA.
- 1+ years experience in 3D CAD (SolidWorks preferred).
- Some hands-on experience with machining, fabrication, and rapid prototyping skills and technologies.
- Testing the performance of mechanical designs.
- Basic dynamic and kinematic analysis and simulation.
- Experience with electro-mechanical designs.
- Experience designing sealed enclosures for electronics and mechanical systems.
- Experience with Ansys or other CAE/engineering simulation software.
Software Engineer Internship: Shaping the Future of Data-Driven Decisions
Gecko Robotics also offers internship opportunities within its software teams. These roles are ideal for students passionate about leveraging software to unlock insights from the vast amounts of data collected by Gecko robots.
About the Role
Gecko’s software teams come into the picture after our robots and operators collect data in the field. The petabytes of data our robots collect are only valuable and useful if we as humans (and our software tools) are able to understand the story the inspections are telling. The Software Organization’s work bridges multiple data layers and functions, ultimately converging in our transformative Cantilever software that directly impacts critical maintenance and repair decision making worldwide.
Internship Program at Gecko Robotics, Software Team
Software engineering interns at Gecko take part in the full lifecycle of product development - from initial planning, through design and development of new functionality, to deployment and iteration with users. By embedding fully within their teams, Gecko Interns are able to get hands-on experience while working on projects that matter, not only to Gecko but also to the larger world.
Read also: Robotics Technician Certification Explained
Future Geckos that join our software teams are placed based on their strengths, interests, and needs of our business. This process happens as your start date arrives! Here are some brief descriptions of possible teams you can make an impact on.
Potential Teams
- Data Systems: Creates the software needed to turn raw inspection data into deliverables for customers, develop pipelines that perform automated processing, and empower our internal data analysis team with tools to manually process datasets more efficiently and accurately.
- Enterprise: Responsible for Gecko’s customer facing, business-to-business, enterprise software. The team also claims that they make the ‘prettiest’ applications at Gecko.
- Rolodex: Builds and maintains a unified data model for all of Gecko, and drives data governance as we grow and scale.
- Platform: The Software Platform team’s purpose is to empower software engineers, reduce unnecessary blockers, and increase our velocity to create exceptional products. We do this by making software effortless to build, deploy, and manage.
What You Will Do
As a member of the Software Engineering team, you will:
- Operate in a highly collaborative environment to design, code, and ship the features that unlock insights and value from the huge volumes of data collected by Gecko robots everyday.
- Leverage software to enable data-driven decision making and clean reporting.
- Build new aspects to improve the structure of our existing data.
- Create the foundation for future software development at Gecko.
Technologies We Use
Gecko Robotics primarily operates using Python, React, and Typescript with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as their cloud provider.
About You
To be considered for a Software Engineer Internship, candidates should:
- Be working towards a B.S., M.S, or M.S.E. in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical or Computer Engineering, or related technical field.
- Have a target graduation date between December 2024 and Spring/Summer 2025
- Possess experience designing secure data APIs that make it easy to create, secure, and retrieve data and build applications
- Desire to have a high impact at a fast-moving startup as a key contributor on a new project and fast-growing team
- Demonstrate a strong passion for learning and growth and are open to new ideas, new technologies, strong devops practices, and continuous feedback
- Exhibit excellent communication skills
- Possess high self-motivation and love of self-directed learning
Company Culture and Benefits
Gecko Robotics values collaboration, innovation, and partnership. The company fosters an office-first culture, believing that the best work is achieved when people are together in person. However, they also understand the need for flexibility and offer options for remote work when necessary.
Gecko Robotics is committed to creating a culture of inclusion and belonging and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. They believe it is their collective responsibility to uphold these values and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to join them in their mission.
In addition to a competitive compensation package, Gecko Robotics offers:
- Company equity
- 401(k) matching
- Gender-neutral parental leave
- Full medical, dental, and vision insurance
- Mental health and wellness support
- Ongoing professional development
- Family planning assistance
- Flexible paid time off
Application Information
Gecko Robotics is currently hiring interns for Summer 2025. Applications for other terms will not be considered at this time. A minimum commitment of 10-12 weeks is required for this position. Our tentative intern start dates are May 27th and June 16th of 2025. This internship will be in-person and based out of our Pittsburgh or Boston office.
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