Mechanical Engineering Intern (IoT and Mechatronics)

Saturn Terminal turns satellite imagery, soil sensors, and weather data into irrigation decisions growers can act on the same morning. This internship owns the physical side of that: the sensors we put in the ground, the mesh network that carries their readings back, and the actuators that will switch irrigation on and off.

You will be outside with the equipment as often as you are at a keyboard, and you will be shipping real work rather than shadowing it.

What you will do

• Deploy, calibrate, and maintain a growing fleet of field sensors, from soil moisture and weather to flow and pressure
• Help design and build out a mesh network of sensors so readings make it back reliably from every corner of a field
• Bring up new sensor types and help wire their data into our ingestion pipeline, then verify the readings are trustworthy
• Prototype actuator setups for turning irrigation on and off, including valves, relays, and solenoids
• Design mounts and enclosures for hardware that has to survive outdoors year round
• Debug connectivity, power, and data quality issues in the field

What we are looking for

• Studying mechanical engineering, mechatronics, or a related field
• Real IoT experience, which matters most here: at least one class and one hands-on project where you connected sensors to a microcontroller and did something useful with the data
• Comfort working across many different sensor types, and the patience to read a datasheet and bring up one you have never touched
• Familiarity with wireless data transmission such as LoRa, Zigbee, Wi-Fi, or BLE, and interest in how mesh networks stay connected across a large field
• Willing to work outdoors in a field environment

Nice to have

• Mechatronics experience, especially driving actuators, since we will inevitably be opening and closing irrigation valves from software
• CAD skills in SolidWorks or Fusion 360 for designing sensor mounts and enclosures
• Exposure to Python or another language for working with sensor data
• Prior agricultural or field research experience

Details

• Paid at $15 to $20 per hour, depending on experience
• 10 to 20 hours per week, scheduled around your classes
• 2 to 3 month term, with the possibility of extending
• On site at the WET Center on the Fresno State campus