Internship or Graduation: AI Agent Orchestration for Enterprise Workflows

About us

Damen Shipyards Group aims to become the world’s most sustainable and digitally connected shipyard. The Damen AI Services Team (DAS) contributes to this vision by building AI services for Damen that shape the future of shipbuilding. We develop reusable AI capabilities and scalable solutions that can be applied across the organization. You will join DAS, based in Gorinchem. The team works on applied AI topics such as AI agent integration, enterprise automation, responsible AI, and data driven product development.

The role

Within Damen, the use of AI agents is expanding rapidly. We already have a first agent integrated with SAP, and more agents are expected to follow, for example for systems such as IBM Maximo, Workday, and engineering tools. Each of these agents will support a specific business function. To realize their full potential, they will need to work together. Before multiple agents are deployed in production, we want to understand how an orchestration layer should function, how different agents can collaborate, exchange context, and operate within clear organizational boundaries.

Your mission is to explore and prototype orchestration principles that enable effective collaboration between enterprise and custom AI agents at Damen, ensuring that a future multi agent environment is functional and responsibly designed.

The project focuses on three research themes:

• Orchestration and Task Planning
  • How can an orchestration layer decide which agent performs which part of a task?
  • How can agents share results efficiently without confusion or duplication?
  • How can we combine clear rule based coordination with adaptive planning?
• Context and Memory Management
  • How to pass relevant context between agents without unintended data sharing
  • How to manage short term and long term memory in multi agent workflows
  • How to track sources and ensure consistency across tasks
• Responsible Information Handling
  • How to prevent sensitive information from being exposed between agents
  • How to ensure transparency and explainability in agent decisions
  • How to encode roles, permissions, and responsibilities that guide agent behavior

Key accountabilities

• Perform a focused literature and technology review on multi agent orchestration patterns for enterprises
• Translate findings into a practical architecture proposal for Damen
• Prototype an orchestration layer that coordinates multiple agents on realistic workflows
• Design and test context passing and memory strategies, including source tracing and consistency checks
• Define and demonstrate guardrails for access control, separation of duties, and responsible information handling
• Document results and present progress to the team regularly
• Deliver a working proof of concept plus recommendations for production readiness

Skills & experience

At least several skills/experiences from the following list are required to be considered:

• MSc student in Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical field
• Strong Python skills and ability to build prototypes cleanly and systematically
• Interest in LLM systems, agent frameworks, and software architecture in an enterprise setting
• Basic understanding of security, privacy, and role based access concepts is a plus
• Communicates fluently in English

What we offer

• Academic level mentoring throughout the internship
• Internship compensation and travel allowance in line with company policy
• Hands on experience with enterprise AI adoption in a high impact environment
• A project with direct relevance to multiple business functions and future digital products
• Potential for internal rollout, and possibly a publication or conference contribution depending on results

Due to housing issues we cannot accept international students that do not have accommodation in the Netherlands yet.

Recruiter: Liselotte van Veenendaal

Email: liselotte.van.veenendaal@damen.com

Damen has 35 shipyards on five different continents and operates in more than 100 countries. You contribute to this growth while benefitting from the diverse development and career opportunities that our company offers. With our extensive portfolio of products and solutions you will never get bored and never stop learning. We offer you a world of possibilities. Working at Damen means contributing to the highest quality in shipbuilding, with an eye to the future and future generations. We want to make the world a better place by becoming the most sustainable maritime solution provider. For that, we need you. Become part of our family.