Internship Engineering Rivers

Mission to Metrics

The mission of The Ocean Cleanup is to develop technology to rid the world’s oceans and rivers of plastic. Our driven Engineering team within the Rivers department develops and implements the technical solutions for river cleaning, in close cooperation with Operations and other technical teams. This can mean both R&D-style development as well as recurring project engineering and deployment. Our scope of work stretches from specification and architecting/conceptualization, through design & verification, to installation, testing & commissioning. We combine in-house development and engineering work with (outsourcing and verification of) third-party engineering work, to find the most effective solutions.

"We offer internships in different flavors; from hands-on involvement in projects, to method and tool development. We tune the internship topic to the skills and interests of the best applicants and the needs of our team. Whichever flavor we go for; you will always be involved in some real-life projects, where our engineers teach you tricks of the trade – from analyzing problems to designing, analyzing and implementing solutions!" - Samo Simonian, Head of Engineering – Rivers

The Assignment

Depending on your skills and interests and the timing of your internship you’ll be involved in (a sub-selection of) the following typical engineering/development work:

• Scout and rank possible plastic interception locations and architectures
• Synthesize requirements and concept solution for plastic interception solutions in rivers; both plastic containment and plastic extraction parts of the solution
• Design the interception solution at higher architectural level and/or design parts / assemblies for a specific interception solution or broadly usable interception technology
• Model and analyse the performance of the solution in the water and other phenomena relevant to our interceptions
• Generate 2D and/or 3D drawings of the designs
• Create - and where relevant code - new methods and tools for design and analysis
• Interact with the Operations department for a seamless product + operation design
• Depending on the timing of your internship you may be involved in installation, testing and operation support

Professional Qualifications

• You should be registered as a student at an EU educational institution, pursuing a technical degree.
• Affinity with practical design, production, testing and operation is a pro
• Experience with analytical and numerical modelling and analysis is a pro
• Experience in design and simulation softwares is a pro
• Experience with well-structured (python) programming is a pro
• Affinity with "stuff on and in the water" (boats, sailing etc) is a pro
• Good communication and report-writing skills, with proficiency in the English language

Personal Qualifications

• Intrinsically motivated for our mission to rid the world’s oceans and rivers of plastics
• An unwavering and pro-active eagerness to learn fundamental and applied engineering
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Attention to detail and ability to work with complex information
• Having a knack for creativity and pragmatism
• Ability to work autonomously on assignments, in interaction with our Engineering team and other team members and partners
• At least a rudimentary sense of humour is required

Additional Details

• A valid Dutch/EU work permit is required.
• We believe we are stronger together, while harnessing the uniqueness each individual brings. That is why we take a fair, equal opportunity, and transparent approach to hiring and welcome special needs requests.

Curious to hear how it is to work at The Ocean Cleanup? Listen to our team members explain their work in our podcast.