{"id":860965,"url":"https://alion.io/job/fdcl-internship-programming-automation","title":"Internship - Programming & Automation","company":{"id":694690,"name":"Fiducial","domain":"fdcl.nl","url":"https://alion.io/company/fdcl","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":3,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Early Careers","role_family":"Early Careers","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"explicit","locations":["Delft, Netherlands"],"countries":["NL"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":1000,"max":null,"currency":"EUR","period":"month","gross":null,"usd_annual":13776},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Computer Vision","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"Gazebo","optional":true},{"name":"GitHub","optional":true},{"name":"Isaac Sim","optional":true},{"name":"Linux","optional":true},{"name":"Motion Planning","optional":true},{"name":"MoveIt","optional":true},{"name":"MuJoCo","optional":true},{"name":"OpenCV","optional":true},{"name":"ROS","optional":true},{"name":"SLAM","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-14T11:06:39Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-14","last_verified_at":"2026-09-29T10:23:05Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":46,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":46},"description":"WE CANNOT PROVIDE VISA SPONSORSHIP\nDetails\nPreferred starting date: ASAP\nWeekly availability: Full-time (5 days/week)\nPeriod: 6 months\nLocation: Aerospace Innovation Hub, Delft, the Netherlands\nAbout the company\nFiducial is a young but fast-growing deep-tech start-up with big ambitions at the frontier of autonomy, perception, and defence. Currently, we are developing software for advanced onboard UAV situational awareness in military applications. Using low-cost and widely available sensors and compute, our solutions are built for scalability. From there, we plan to develop a line-up of interconnected solutions to safeguard European safety.\nOur team consists of engineers who are passionate about the technology and solutions they develop. The only time most of us are not thinking about the technology is when we are asleep, and sometimes even then. Our team members come from different backgrounds such as Aerospace Engineering, Computational Science and Engineering, Robotics, and Computer Graphics. Our office is located in the Aerospace Innovation Hub, a start-up hub on the TU Delft campus in the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering.\nWe work closely with top-tier partners, ranging from government agencies and prime contractors to academic research institutes and other start-ups. Our projects span from large tender orders in collaboration with partners to low-TRL research with government agencies. Whether through formal R&D programs or rapid prototyping tracks, we operate at the intersection of innovation and deployment.\nThe project\nSensor calibration is a manual job today, and it does not scale to the number of sensor units we intend to ship. We are building automated test and calibration infrastructure to fix that, starting with a cell built around a UFactory UF850 robotic arm on a linear rail.\nWe already have the arm and the calibration software. What we do not have is the physical cell around it, or the software that drives it. This first project is split into two internships that run side by side:\nRobot programming and automation - this position\nMechanical design and integration - separate posting\nThe two interns will work closely together. Neither half of this project is any good on its own. This calibration cell is the first thing we are building on this front, not the last, so there is a good chance the right person carries on to other robotics and automation projects once it is running.\nYour role\nIf you are the kind of person who is not satisfied until an automated system actually works reliably, not just once, this internship is designed for you.\nWe are looking for a Robot Programming & Automation Intern to help build the software behind our robotic test and automation infrastructure. Your first project is turning a robotic arm on a linear rail into a system that reliably captures good calibration data - but the skills involved are the same ones we’ll lean on for whatever we automate next: getting a robot to move well, knowing whether the data it’s collecting is any good, and building something solid enough to run unattended.\nGetting that right is the substance of this internship, on this project and on whatever comes after it.\nWhat you’ll do\nBuild 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.\nDesign pose generation that’s actually informed by the calibration problem, including getting proper coverage across a multi-camera rig rather than just one lens at a time.\nGet the timing and synchronisation right between the robot, the cameras, and the captured data - this is where automated rigs usually go wrong.\nGate data quality at capture time, and retry within the run rather than finding out later that a dataset is unusable.\nClose the loop with our 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.\nPackage captures with the metadata needed to make a calibration reproducible, and make the whole thing robust to failures mid-run.\nBuild a simple operator-facing workflow: mount the rig, pick a profile, press go.\nWork closely with the mechanical intern - your requirements shape their fixture design, and their measurements shape your motion limits.\nWho you are\nYou are enrolled in a relevant study program (Robotics, Computer Science, Computational Science and Engineering, Mechatronics, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or similar).\nYou are strong in Python. C++ is a plus.\nYou are comfortable with 3D geometry: rigid transforms, rotation representations, coordinate frames, and keeping your conventions straight when it is 6pm and nothing lines up.\nYou are interested in robot programming specifically - motion, reachability, collisions, repeatability - and not only in the vision maths around it.\nYou understand enough about how camera calibration works to reason about what makes a dataset good or useless. You do not need to be able to write the solver.\nYou have worked with real sensors and real robots, and you have learned that they lie about timing.\nYou care about reliability. An automated process that works four times out of five is not automated.\nYou write code that another engineer can pick up and extend.\nYou are comfortable taking responsibility for software that moves physical hardware.\nYou are independent, curious, organized, and resourceful.\nLinux does not scare you, and neither does a robot that moves the moment your code says move.\nWe care much more about what you have built and made work than about grades.\nNice to have\nThese are strong pluses, but not strict requirements:\nROS 2, MoveIt 2, tf2, and motion planning in practice\nExperience with industrial or collaborative arm SDKs (UFactory / xArm, UR, Franka), or motion control more generally\nHands-on camera calibration experience: OpenCV, Kalibr, ChArUco or AprilTag targets, hand-eye calibration\nMulti-camera rigs, and the specific pain of calibrating cameras with little or no overlapping field of view\nMachine vision cameras: triggering and synchronisation, GenICam, exposure control, rolling versus global shutter\nCoverage or observability reasoning: understanding why some poses inform a parameter and others do not\nSimulation environments (Gazebo, Isaac Sim, MuJoCo)\nDocker, CI, and the habit of writing tests before you need them\nExperience turning a research script into something an operator can actually use\nPlease include\nWhen applying, please include links, repositories, or writeups that show us you build things that work. For example:\nGitHub repositories, with a note on which parts you actually wrote\nrobot arm or robot motion projects\ncamera calibration, multi-view geometry, SLAM, or structure-from-motion work\ndata capture pipelines, test automation, or anything that had to run unattended\ncomputer vision projects\nsimulation work\na short writeup of something that broke and how you found the cause\nanything that demonstrates hands-on technical ownership\nIf you have ever chased a calibration error you couldn’t explain, eventually traced it to a timestamp, and fixed it properly, you’ll probably fit right in.\nRequirements\nEnrolled in a relevant study program (Robotics, Computer Science, CSE, Mechatronics, Aerospace, Electrical Engineering, or similar)\nStrong programming skills, Python at minimum\nComfortable working in Linux\nStrong interest in robotics, automation, computer vision, or perception\nEnglish proficiency\nOrganized and proactive working style\nWhat we offer\n1000 euro monthly compensation\n10 vacation days during the internship period\nFlexible working hours and the option to work from home 2 days per week where practical\nA direct and significant influence on highly innovative products\nThe opportunity to work close to the hardware and the product, with fast iteration and tight feedback loops\nFull ownership of a self-contained system that the rest of the company will depend on\nA team environment where practical experimentation, learning, and ownership are expected\nThe application procedure\nIf after reading the above you are convinced you are the right person for the job, send us some information about yourself. This can be a resume, website, portfolio, or any other source that gives us a clear impression of your background, technical skills, and hands-on experience.\nWe will get back to you ASAP. If we think you could be a fit for the position, we will invite you for an informal introduction so we can get to know you, and equally important, you can get to know us. After this, a more technically focused interview may follow.\nIf at that point we believe you are the person we are looking for, we will discuss the specifics such as starting date and internship period.\nWelcome to the team!","description_format":"text","description_chars":8801,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"Advanced (C1)","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Flexible schedule"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Netherlands","iso":"NL","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotics","Drones & UAVs"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-13T09:56:29Z"}],"liveness":{"score":12,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.446,"p_room":0.28,"age_days":45,"expected_fill_days":21,"reasons":["conf:6","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-09-29T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":13776,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/fdcl-internship-programming-automation","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/fdcl-internship-programming-automation.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-30T00:32:36Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":361,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4639,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-01T00:00:00Z"}}}