Interviews: November 1 ­ December 15, 2018

Start Date: January 8, 2018

Course Credit: 4 units ECE199 or ECE291

Faculty Sponsor: Professor Truong Nguyen

Industry Sponsor: Workpology, Inc.

Additional Info: After successful completion of the semester (4 units ECE199 or ECE291 course credit), students who qualify may also be qualified for priced company stock options as compensation for their software contributions).

Industry Sponsor:

ProductBio is Silicon Valley data analytics and software company working to shift procurement spend toward more sustainable choices. Recognized by the California State Senate as a green procurement product­level data provider and green spend management solution for government and businesses, ProductBio was created as a central component of a major EPA environmentally preferable purchasing initiative unveiled in 2013 by executive order under the federal acquisition regulation. Today, ProductBio provides product upgrades to cities, schools, and businesses, servicing over 26 municipalities to help steward more than $2.5 billion in procurement spend across the country and growing.

Technical Knowledge and Skill Requirements: ­

• Currently enrolled as a student and able to receive course credit for internship hours. ­
• Have completed coursework or have shown experience in computer science, database management, software engineering languages ­
• Prior training and/or shown experience with Web application development framework and tools (Django, Amazon Web Services, Docker, Angularjs) and languages (Javascript, HTML, SQL, and Python)

Abilities and Preferences: ­

• Are excited by executing on market growth strategies and wanting to learn about our industry, and are willing to take weekly direction from team counterparts and supervisors.
• Interested in gaining experience at a growth ­oriented data science startup and looking for opportunities to join the team after graduation. ­
• Results ­driven, has a natural aptitude and curiosity for the challenges of growing the business and finding the best model of scaling the impact of our products to enable sustainable purchasing. ­
• Energetic self­ starters who are able to work independently, but also comfortable with team ­based work structures; ability to demonstrate flexibility with changing priorities.

Internship Opportunities:

We have many exciting ongoing software and data projects for advanced undergraduate and experienced graduate students. The internship can be formatted for a student capstone project or scoped for a poster presentation and write­up if required for course credit. As a member of the engineering team, you will be contributing to the development of a sustainable procurement management systems to help evaluate the environmental, social, and fiscal impacts of institutional procurement. Those interested in software engineering and in data engineering will both be working together using our current technical stack: ­

• Framework: Django ­
• Frontend: Javascript, HTML, Angularjs, Jquery, and Bootstrap ­
• Backend: Python ­
• Database: Amazon Web Services(PSQL) ­
• Servers: Amazon Web Services (EC2, EB, CS, R53) ­
• Reversion: GIT, Amazon Web Services ­
• Deployment: Docker

Interns will have the opportunity to collaborate with data, engineering, and business development teams to help design and build solutions for our data partners. You’ll gain experience in solution scoping, estimation, planning, and oversight of architecture, development, integration and implementation of projects and how to use tools and services as part of product architecture.

Why this internship is meaningful:

Public and private institutions consume 2/3 of economic resources but manage only 10% of their sustainability impact. Sustainable purchasing can unlock the remaining 90% of positive impact potential. Whether a buyer demands 30% post­consumer recycled paper, low­VOC paint, or Energy­Star tablets, the market for sustainable products needs to be supported by providing the information and analytics necessary to make smart product purchasing decisions.

Our approach is founded on the belief that being told to buy sustainably (via policies) is meaningless if you cannot effectively compare products, and that you cannot effectively compare products if you don’t know what sustainability (standards) mean for each category and if you don’t know how things were made (marketing claims). To solve climate change systematically with procurement, we make products with the point of view that:

• consumption should be quantified for behavior change to be effective
• buyers should be able to harness their expenses and track it
• cost, quality, sustainability can be reconciled

Right now we’re serving cities and universities by guiding their development of environmentally preferable purchasing policies and then following through by showing them categories and products with the highest impact issues and spend amounts they can shift toward greener, more ethical, more local choices of products and manufacturers in service of environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability. Help be part of the solution and join us! Email: Jobs@productbio.com