Regent The Energy Storage System (ESS) Intern supports battery characterization, test operations, and simulation work for REGENT's Seaglider electric watercraft. This role involves hands-on testing and modeling to inform energy storage design.
Responsibilities
REGENT's Energy Storage System team is working on one of the most foundational questions behind our Seagliders: how do we store and deliver the energy that gets them across the water, safely and efficiently, mission after mission. As our ESS Intern, you'll dig directly into that question — splitting your time between hands-on test support, battery characterization, and simulation work that spans our Squire and Viceroy programs. You'll help the team understand how individual cells and full packs actually behave under real conditions, how they should be integrated into our platforms, and how to optimally design the high voltage vehicle architecture. This isn't a narrow, single-task internship — it's a genuinely broad technical role with real scope behind it, built for someone who wants to learn by doing.
You'll sit within our Hardware Engineering group, working closely with the Electrical Systems and Mechanical teams, where precision and curiosity go hand in hand. The team moves fast and expects you to pick up REGENT-specific tools and architectures quickly, but once you're oriented, you'll be trusted to run with real analysis and contribute findings that shape how we think about battery integration going forward.
If you're a student with strong engineering fundamentals who gets energized by ambiguity, hands-on testing, and the chance to help define how next-generation electric watercraft get their power, this is a place where you'll do work that matters from day one.
Characterize Battery Packs: You'll run tests on battery packs to understand how they perform under the conditions our Seagliders actually face. Your findings will directly inform how the team evaluates viable energy storage options.
Support Paladin Test Operations: You'll get hands-on with test support and battery servicing, working alongside engineers who rely on accurate, well-documented testing to move programs forward. This is where you'll build real intuition for how packs behave outside of a datasheet.
Model Mission-Profile Performance: Using Python or MATLAB, you'll build simulations that show how battery performance holds up across different mission profiles. This work helps the team make informed tradeoffs long before hardware decisions are finalized.
Contribute to Integration Documentation: You'll help document how battery systems integrate into REGENT's high voltage architecture across platforms. Clear, thorough documentation here keeps the whole team moving faster.
Own Energy Budgets and Trade Studies: You'll build and refine energy budgets and trade studies in Excel that compare options across cost, performance, and integration complexity. These studies feed directly into engineering decisions on the program.
Track Cell and Pack Data: You'll help monitor pack-specific characteristics during testing, keeping an eye on the details that matter for performance and safety. Good data here is the foundation for everything else the team builds on top of it.
What You'll Bring
Strong Engineering Fundamentals: You're currently a senior or graduate student in mechanical, electrical, aerospace, or chemical engineering. You come in with the core fundamentals already in place, ready to apply them from week one.
Li-ion Battery Knowledge: You understand the basics of lithium-ion systems — capacity, C-rate, state of charge, internal resistance, voltage curves, and series/parallel configurations. This foundation is essential to the work you'll be doing all summer.
