About Valstad

Valstad is building the machine that builds the ships.

We combine industrial robotics, welding, sensing, and AI to turn 3D models into real high-mix ship structure. Our mission is to rapidly expand America's maritime output by 100x.

Our team works directly with large industrial robots and real manufacturing equipment at our Austin facility. The systems we build will ultimately be deployed across shipyards and industrial facilities throughout the country.

About Valstad

Valstad is rebuilding how ships are made.

American shipbuilding is constrained by slow, labor-intensive production methods and a shortage of skilled manufacturing capacity. We are developing robotic production systems that can turn engineering data directly into finished steel structures, dramatically reducing the time and manual programming required to build ships.

Our first platform combines industrial robots, automated material handling, welding, sensing and AI-driven manufacturing software to produce large ship panels and structural assemblies. Instead of programming each new part by hand, our goal is for the system to understand the CAD model, determine how the structure should be assembled and welded, and generate the robotic plan required to build it.

This requires software that allows engineers and operators to understand complex 3D structures, review automatically generated manufacturing plans, control production workflows and respond when physical conditions differ from the nominal CAD model.

The software you build will be used to manufacture real steel structures in our Austin facility and, over time, in shipyards across the country.

The Internship

Valstad is seeking a Software Engineering Intern to help build interactive 3D and manufacturing applications for our robotic production platform.

You will work with CAD-derived geometry, robot paths, manufacturing data and factory workflows. Depending on your experience and interests, your project may involve 3D visualization, CAD-model processing, manufacturing-plan review, production interfaces or tools for analyzing robotic operations.

This is not an internship centered on mock projects or isolated coding exercises. You will own a defined software capability, work directly with engineers and factory users, and deliver something intended for use by the team.

You will be paired with a technical mentor and will participate in normal engineering planning, code review, testing and deployment processes.

Potential Projects

Your primary project will be selected based on your experience and Valstad’s highest-priority needs. Possible projects include:

Building an interactive 3D viewer for ship panels, stiffeners, welds, fixtures and robotic operations

Visualizing robot paths, tool orientations, work envelopes and manufacturing sequences

Developing model-selection, filtering, measurement, annotation and section-view tools

Building a CAD-import validation interface that identifies missing geometry, incorrect units or unsupported model conditions

Developing tools for comparing model revisions and identifying affected manufacturing operations

Building production job-status and operator interfaces

Creating visualizations for coordinate frames, transformations and sensor measurements

Developing tools for reviewing the difference between nominal CAD geometry and measured physical geometry

Building dashboards for robot faults, manual interventions, cycle times and production outcomes

Improving the performance of large 3D models through instancing, level of detail or incremental loading

Creating automated tests for complex manufacturing workflows

Developing internal tools that connect CAD entities to manufacturing and inspection records

What You Will Do

Design and implement a scoped software project from initial requirements through demonstration and deployment.

Build production-quality frontend or full-stack software.

Work with manufacturing, robotics and welding engineers to understand real operational requirements.

Observe how software is used in Valstad’s manufacturing facility.