Industrial Data and Process Digitisation Intern

About The Business: Unhindr is a London-based wearable robotics company developing meta-materials, working primarily on a soft-robotics prosthetics product. We design, prototype and manufacture in-house at our workshop in Stratford, East London. We are a small, hands-on engineering team. You will work alongside the people building our products, and the system you build will be in use in our workshop during your placement.

Overview: Design a platform to automate data capture at different across different manufacturing processes.

Desirable Skills: Hands-on experience building machines or hardware Coding experience in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript CAD experience (e.g. SolidWorks, Fusion 360 or Onshape)

Job Description:

Our products are built in-house through a multi-step manufacturing process. We want the key inputs and outputs of each process step quantified in real time and logged into our systems automatically, with stock and quality data captured digitally at the point of work.

Over 12 weeks you will design, build and deploy a digital production platform that links these steps together: digital work instructions, stock and bill-of-materials tracking, batch traceability, and sensors that log process data automatically. As a separate workstream, you will build an automatic generator that produces the designs and drawings used in our manufacturing process directly from input parameters, replacing manual editing of designs.

Key Duties:

• Map our manufacturing process step by step with the production team and define the data captured at each step (inputs, parameters, checks, outputs).
• Design the data model and build the platform's core modules: digital work instructions, stock and bill-of-materials management, and batch records.
• Build traceability so every finished unit can be traced back to its material batches, process parameters and quality checks.
• Specify, build and calibrate sensor nodes that quantify key process inputs and outputs in real time and log them into the platform automatically, with no manual data entry.
• Build an automatic design generator that produces the designs and manufacturing drawings used in production from input parameters, replacing manual editing of design files.
• Test each module in the workshop with the team, measure record-keeping time and completeness against the current method, and iterate.
• Write user and technical documentation so the team can run and extend the system after your placement.
• Report progress weekly and deliver a final demonstration and handover in week 12.

Desired Skills:

• 2nd or 3rd year undergraduate, or master's student, in mechanical, industrial, bio-, electronic or software engineering, mechatronics, computer science or a related subject
• Hands-on experience building machines or hardware
• Coding experience in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript
• CAD experience (e.g. SolidWorks, Fusion 360 or Onshape)
• Familiar with LLM-assisted coding and app building
• Ability to learn quickly and use initiative to identify and resolve problems
• Be able to establish and maintain good working relationships and rapport as well as working effectively in a team
• Strong time management skills with the ability to prioritise and take ownership over deadlines
• Efficient at prioritising tasks
• Strong interpersonal and both written and verbal communication skills 

Preferred skills:

• Microcontroller experience (Arduino, ESP32 or similar) and interfacing sensors
• Web front-end development (React or similar) and data visualisation or dashboard
• SQL, Git version control and hosted backend or database services
• 3D printing
• Interest in manufacturing, quality systems or medical devices