Electrical Engineering Intern/Co-op (Spring or Summer '27)
Rugged Robotics
Salary undisclosed
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Description
Rugged Robotics is on a mission to empower the construction industry to build better by innovating new approaches to tough problems using automation. We are a fast-paced start-up environment where every employee takes on multiple roles and wears many hats. To help our customers to build better, we need to build the best team.
The hardware team at Rugged Robotics is responsible for prototyping, designing, and manufacturing robotic solutions that automate construction services with speed, precision and reliability. As an Electrical Engineering Intern working on robots at a start-up, you'll be creating power, communication, & control PCBAs, and testing, debugging, and evaluating circuit performance, and supporting the making & commissioning of our fleet of robots.
Internship / Coop Term: Spring 2027 and/or Summer 2027
Location: Onsite in Houston, TX
The Role
- Develop, build, evaluate, and test product solutions to meet the challenging needs of our construction customers.
- Develop firmware to power, communicate with, and control complex electro-mechanical systems.
- Use Altium to craft circuits, schematics, and board layouts of new PCB designs for prototypes and product.
- Make informed engineering decisions by creating simulations, running tests, methodically collecting data from measuring equipment, and conducting analyses with a range of techniques.
- Engage and collaborate with vendors around the world to refine designs and deliver hardware to meet project timelines.
You Are
- Experienced working with electro-mechanical or electrical systems from a prior internship, extra-curricular project, or lab research.
- Passionate about creating product that works reliably and exceeds customer's expectations.
- Hands-on with prototyping, building, & debugging electrical systems to quickly generate proof-of-concepts and root cause issues.
- Enthusiastic about learning new techniques & technologies and are comfortable working in a fast-paced environment.
Rugged Robotics is headquartered in Houston, TX in the vibrant neighborhood of East Downtown. This role requires close collaboration with teammates, and we value the interactions that come from working together around the robots in the lab.
Interested in Rugged Robotics but don't tick all the boxes? Don't see a role that meets your skills? Reach out, let us know how you think you can contribute to the team, and define your own position.
Rugged Robotics is an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we value diversity at our company. All qualified candidates will receive consideration regardless of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender, identity, age, national origin, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or other protected legal status.
About this role
Rugged Robotics is building automation solutions for construction, and this internship puts you directly on the hardware team designing and testing the electrical systems that power their robots. You'll move beyond coursework into real product development—designing PCBs in Altium, writing firmware for electro-mechanical control, running circuit tests and simulations, and collaborating with vendors to deliver working hardware on actual timelines. The work spans the full cycle from prototype to commissioning, so you'll see the impact of your decisions quickly.
This role suits someone with hands-on experience already under their belt, whether from a prior internship, personal projects, or lab work. You should be comfortable debugging electrical systems, comfortable with uncertainty, and genuinely interested in reliability and meeting customer needs rather than just completing tasks. The start-up environment means you'll wear multiple hats and work closely with teammates in the Houston lab—it's not remote, and it's not a passive role.
If you've built or debugged circuits before and want to work on something that actually gets deployed in the field, this is worth applying for. Rugged Robotics explicitly welcomes candidates who don't check every box; they're more interested in how you think you can contribute than in a perfect resume match.
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Pay for this role
The employer didn't post a pay range for this role. That usually means pay is set in negotiation, which favors whoever arrives with numbers. Check ranges on comparable Electrical Engineering Intern/Co-op (Spring or Summer '27) postings in Houston, and analyze any offer before you accept it.
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