Our team and mission

This position is based at the EGNOS Project Office – Toulouse CST

The mission of the ESA Directorate of Navigation is to lead and stimulate European industry in the design, development and procurement of the first ever European-owned Global Navigation Satellite Systems, delivering worldwide navigation services at unprecedented levels of performance. To successfully achieve this mission, the directorate benefits from ESA’s organizational and technical excellence in combination with an unparalleled dedication and passion for space from its team members. Through cooperation with the European community in the satellite navigation domain and active contribution to international GNSS forums, the Directorate of Navigation is continuously looking ahead and paving the way for future generations of satellite navigation systems.

Candidates interested are encouraged to visit the ESA website: http://www.esa.int

Field(s) of activity for the internship

Topic of the internship: AI for SBAS System Engineering

The EGNOS V3.1 System is composed of 39 Remote reference stations, 2 Main Control Centers (hosting in particular the central processing Facilities) and 6 Uplink Stations to connect to 3 EGNOS Geostationary satellites –  All sites being interconnected by a dedicated Real-time Wide Area Network.
EGNOS V3.1 design is the result of a complex multi-disciplinary exercise implementing stringent performance, safety, security  and operability requirements into several interconnected sub-systems.

The internship aims at exploring the possibilities to improve the efficiency of engineering activities with the support of Artificial Intelligence. The objective is to demonstrate the benefits with “AI accelerators for System Engineering” in concrete cases of engineering activities performed on EGNOS Project.

You will collaborate with EGNOS Project Office System Engineer to:

• Perform a state of the art survey of use of AI in engineering activities;
• Identify the activities where use of AI is relevant to support EGNOS engineering activities (Eg: Performance, System Design, Operations, Verification) and system reviews;
• Design and validate a proof of concept of identified AI accelerators on a set of use cases defined in collaboration with EPO system engineering team using internal or free downloadable stand-alone AI engines;
• Evaluate the benefits of the proposed approach supported by AI;
• Perform demonstrations in different ESA directorate to present the proposed approach and collect ideas in other domains.

Behavioural competencies

Result Orientation
Operational Efficiency
Fostering Cooperation
Relationship Management
Continuous Improvement
Forward Thinking

For more information, please refer to ESA Core Behavioural Competencies guidebook

Education

You must be a university student, preferably in your final or second-to-last year of a university course at Master’s level and you need to remain enrolled at your University for the entire duration of the internship.

Additional requirements

The working languages of the Agency are English and French. A good knowledge of one of these is required. Knowledge of another Member State language would be an asset.

Knowledge in the Artificial Intelligence is required.

Some knowledge on the following topics would be an asset:

• System Engineering;
• Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) [GPS] [GALILEO];
• Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) [EGNOS].