F
Internship - Programming & Automation
Contract type
One-time
Work mode
Hybrid · 3 days/week in office · Delft, Netherlands
Experience
Junior / entry level · Not stated
Level inferred from job title
Job description
A six-month internship at Fiducial building the software behind a robotic test and calibration cell, starting with a UFactory UF850 arm on a linear rail. The intern develops robot control, pose generation, synchronisation and data-quality gating so sensor calibration can run unattended.
At a glance
- Employment
- Internship
- Work mode
- Hybrid · 3 days/week in office · Delft, Netherlands
- Languages
- English – fluent
- Pay
- EUR 1,000 / month
What you'll do
- Build the robot control layer: drive the arm through its SDK, coordinate the linear rail, and plan safe motion inside a cell that also has a target, cables, and an operator in it
- Design pose generation informed by the calibration problem, including proper coverage across a multi-camera rig rather than just one lens at a time
- Get the timing and synchronisation right between the robot, the cameras, and the captured data
- Gate data quality at capture time, and retry within the run rather than finding out later that a dataset is unusable
- Close the loop with the existing calibration pipeline: feed it data, read back its results, and use that to decide what to capture next and when a run is done
- Package captures with the metadata needed to make a calibration reproducible, and make the whole thing robust to failures mid-run
- Build a simple operator-facing workflow: mount the rig, pick a profile, press go
- Work closely with the mechanical intern — requirements shape their fixture design, and their measurements shape motion limits
What we're looking for
- Enrolled in a relevant study program (Robotics, Computer Science, Computational Science and Engineering, Mechatronics, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or similar)
- Strong in Python
- Comfortable with 3D geometry: rigid transforms, rotation representations, coordinate frames, and keeping conventions straight
- Interested in robot programming specifically — motion, reachability, collisions, repeatability — and not only in the vision maths around it
- Understand enough about how camera calibration works to reason about what makes a dataset good or useless
- Have worked with real sensors and real robots
- Care about reliability
- Write code that another engineer can pick up and extend
- Comfortable taking responsibility for software that moves physical hardware
- Independent, curious, organized, and resourceful
- Comfortable working in Linux
- Strong interest in robotics, automation, computer vision, or perception
- English proficiency
- Organized and proactive working style
Nice to have
- ROS 2, MoveIt 2, tf2, and motion planning in practice
- Experience with industrial or collaborative arm SDKs (UFactory / xArm, UR, Franka), or motion control more generally
- Hands-on camera calibration experience: OpenCV, Kalibr, ChArUco or AprilTag targets, hand-eye calibration
- Multi-camera rigs, and the specific pain of calibrating cameras with little or no overlapping field of view
- Machine vision cameras: triggering and synchronisation, GenICam, exposure control, rolling versus global shutter
- Coverage or observability reasoning: understanding why some poses inform a parameter and others do not
- Simulation environments (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo)
- Docker, CI, and the habit of writing tests before you need them
- Experience turning a research script into something an operator can actually use
- C++ is a plus
Benefits
- 1000 euro monthly compensation
- 10 vacation days during the internship period
- Flexible working hours and the option to work from home 2 days per week where practical
- A direct and significant influence on highly innovative products
- The opportunity to work close to the hardware and the product, with fast iteration and tight feedback loops
- Full ownership of a self-contained system that the rest of the company will depend on
- A team environment where practical experimentation, learning, and ownership are expected
How to get hired
- 1Send information about yourself — a resume, website, portfolio, or any other source that gives a clear impression of your background, technical skills, and hands-on experience
- 2If we think you could be a fit, we will invite you for an informal introduction
- 3After this, a more technically focused interview may follow
- 4If we believe you are the person we are looking for, we will discuss the specifics such as starting date and internship period
Apply
About Fiducial
A young but fast-growing deep-tech start-up developing software for advanced onboard UAV situational awareness in military applications, using low-cost and widely available sensors and compute, with plans for a line-up of interconnected solutions.
Mission
To safeguard European safety through autonomy, perception, and defence technology
Key facts
- Aerospace Innovation Hub, TU Delft campus, Delft, the Netherlands
- Deep-tech / defence software
- Office located in the Aerospace Innovation Hub, a start-up hub on the TU Delft campus in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering
- Works with government agencies, prime contractors, academic research institutes and other start-ups
- Projects span large tender orders with partners to low-TRL research with government agencies
- Cannot provide visa sponsorship
What they value
- Practical experimentation
- Learning
- Ownership