Co-Op, SCADA Engineer

Lila Sciences; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 34,000 - 48,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

On-site at Alewife

Co-op term Spring 2027

Job summary

Lila Sciences, Inc. is seeking a co-op on the Hardware & Controls Engineering team in Cambridge (Alewife) to build a live connectivity diagram and dashboards for SCADA health data.

You will work with Ignition gateways, EC2, and edge nodes, performing read-only access to AWS and SELECT-only database access while learning the full system architecture. You’ll collaborate with controls engineers and IT/OT, gaining exposure to AWS services, Linux, and data visualization tools.

Qualifications

• Pursuing a bachelor’s or master’s degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field.
• Available full time for the Spring 2027 co-op term, on-site at Alewife.
• Proficiency in Python for scripting and data collection.
• Comfortable working in Linux from the command line.
• Working knowledge of networking fundamentals: IP addressing, subnets, ports, and routing.
• Clear written communication for documenting dashboards and findings.

Responsibilities

• Build a live topology view of edge nodes, brokers, gateways, and databases with per-link status and last-seen timestamps.
• Surface RDS PostgreSQL health: CPU, memory, storage growth, connection counts, replication lag, and slow queries.
• Dashboard Ignition gateway and EC2 metrics, including JVM heap, tag quality, Sparkplug birth and death rates, and scan timing.
• Monitor on-premise edge nodes for reachability, uptime, resource use, and last publish time.
• Integrate existing sources (CloudWatch, Performance Insights, Ignition gateway metrics, broker status) into one interface.
• Document the setup so the team can extend and maintain it after the term ends.

Skills

Python

Linux CLI

Networking fundamentals

Written communication

Education

Pursuing Bachelor's or Master's in Engineering/CS

Tools

Grafana

Prometheus

Ignition

MQTT

EC2

RDS PostgreSQL

Job description

Lila's SCADA system spans cloud and on-premise infrastructure: Ignition gateways on EC2, a historian on RDS PostgreSQL, MQTT brokers, and edge nodes at each site. Today no single view shows the health of all of it, so the team learns about failures from users rather than from monitoring.

As a co-op on the Hardware & Controls Engineering team, you will build that view: a live connectivity diagram showing how every piece connects and which links are up, backed by dashboards covering database, gateway, and edge node health. The work is read-only end to end, with read-only AWS access and SELECT-only database access, so you can explore the full system safely.

You will be based at our Alewife site in Cambridge, working alongside controls engineers and the IT/OT team. Expect wide exposure across AWS, Linux, industrial networking, Ignition, and data visualization, and a clear picture of how an industrial SCADA system fits together end to end.

What You'll Be Building

• Build a live topology view of edge nodes, brokers, gateways, and databases with per-link status and last-seen timestamps
• Surface RDS PostgreSQL health: CPU, memory, storage growth, connection counts, replication lag, and slow queries
• Dashboard Ignition gateway and EC2 metrics, including JVM heap, tag quality, Sparkplug birth and death rates, and scan timing
• Monitor on-premise edge nodes for reachability, uptime, resource use, and last publish time
• Integrate existing sources (CloudWatch, Performance Insights, Ignition gateway metrics, broker status) into one interface
• Document the setup so the team can extend and maintain it after the term ends

What You'll Need to Succeed

• Pursuing a bachelor's or master's degree in engineering, computer science, or a related field
• Available full time for the Spring 2027 co-op term, on-site at Alewife
• Proficiency in Python for scripting and data collection
• Comfortable working in Linux from the command line
• Working knowledge of networking fundamentals: IP addressing, subnets, ports, and routing
• Clear written communication for documenting dashboards and findings

Bonus Points For

• Exposure to AWS, particularly EC2, RDS, CloudWatch, or IAM
• Experience with Grafana, Prometheus, or similar observability tooling
• Familiarity with Ignition, MQTT or Sparkplug, or other industrial SCADA tooling

About LILA

Lila Sciences is building Scientific Superintelligence™ to solve humankind's greatest challenges. We believe science is the most inspiring frontier for AI. Rather than hard-coding expert knowledge into tools, LILA builds systems that can learn for themselves.

LILA combines advanced AI models with proprietary AI Science Factory™ instruments into an operating system for science that executes the entire scientific method autonomously, accelerating discovery at unprecedented speed, scale, and impact across medicine, materials, and energy. Learn more at www.lila.ai.

Guided by our core values of truth, trust, curiosity, grit, and velocity, we move with startup speed while tackling problems of historic importance. If this sounds like an environment you'd love to work in, even if you don't meet every qualification listed above, we encourage you to apply.

Lila Sciences iscommitted to equal employment opportunityregardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

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