Machine Building Intern

Who you are

• You've built things. Maybe a bike you rebuilt, a brewing rig, a CNC conversion, a robot that mostly works. Tell us about it
• You're studying mechanical, electrical, mechatronics, process or chemical engineering — HBO, university, Hochschule/Fachhochschule, MBO or an equivalent applied or vocational program. We care what you can do, not which track you're on. We can sponsor visas
• You're comfortable moving between the workshop, the pilot plant and a desk
• You work well in a small team and speak good English. Dutch isn't needed
• You're still enrolled for the duration of the internship
• Nice to have: welding, machining, plumbing, automation or controls work, electronics, programming, or a biochemistry background. Nobody arrives with all of it. If you have some and you're quick, that works

What the job involves

• The internship is 6 months, full time in Amsterdam, starting September/October 2026
• Our harvest line runs batch today. We're converting it to a fully integrated continuous line, and that's the project you're joining
• It means rebuilding unit operations that were never designed to run this way, building new ones that don't exist yet, and creating all the connective tissue that makes a line: plumbing, buffer tanks, valves, sensors, wiring, and a CIP system that can clean the whole thing automatically
• Most companies buy this from a vendor and wait eight months. We don't. Our pilot brewery, R&D lab, test kitchen and workshop are under one roof, and when we need a piece of equipment we design it, source it, weld it and wire it ourselves
• Our last hardware intern built a UHT skid from scratch - designed, sourced, assembled, welded, wired, programmed, commissioned in three months. It's running today. That's the level of ownership on offer, and it's the reason this internship is worth doing
• The bar: your project ends when the machine you built is running on production days. Not a drawing package, not a design review. Stainless with product flowing through it, going to our kitchen, where you can taste what your machine made
• One central project, yours end to end. See the ideas below: which one you take depends on where you're strongest and what the plant needs when you arrive, and we'll work that out with you
• Central Thermal Skid: Design a centralised utility system packing both high-capacity heating and deep chilling into one machine. Tied to a smart manifold, you’ll size, build, and tune this system to push precise, independent thermal loads to separate tanks across the floor without cross-talk or starvation
• Continuous Treatment Reactor: Convert a critical batch step into a continuous process (PFR or CSTR). You’ll handle it from concept to commissioning, sizing, thermal design, fabrication, integration, and validating performance against the process models
• Clean-In-Place (CIP) System: A continuous line needs automated cleaning to be viable. You’ll design and build the full CIP skid: tanks, dosing, routing, and verification ensuring the plant can run for days instead of hours without manual tear-downs
• Line Rebuild & Integration: Rebuild the line around existing or repurposed equipment. You’ll modify unit operations for continuous flow, reverse-engineer older machinery with modern controls, and build the connective tissue (manifolds, buffer tanks, frames) that ties the process together
• You're expected to have opinions about the whole line, not just your corner of it
• Walk the process, watch production days, find out where it actually stalls and then tell us. Some of the best things you could do here start with noticing that a step takes four hours because of one badly placed valve. If you can back it up and build the fix, build the fix
• You'll also get your hands on everything else: bench-scale rigs so the scientists can test a route next week instead of next quarter, fixing what breaks on production days, fabricating whatever the team needs, and figuring out why something that worked yesterday doesn't today
• And you'll help build the workshop itself. Right now there’s a welding setup, metal working tools, 3D printers and a full electronics workstation. There's a budget to expand it, and what we buy is largely driven by what your builds need. Every machine you spec is one you'll use
• Expected outcomes
• Equipment you designed and built, running in production and used daily by our team
• Real fabrication done: welding, sheet metal, plumbing, wiring
• The full loop from requirement to working machine, owned by you, several times over
• Having converted a real process line from batch to continuous, at an age when most engineers have only read about it
• A workshop that exists because you specified it

Benefits

• Free healthy vegan lunches, snacks and drinks
• Company provides you with a new macbook