MurCal always welcomes talented college students to work alongside our team members on various engineering projects in a collaborative environment. This provides them with hands on “real world” experience. Our interns play a crucial role on their teams and are involved in important projects that create real impact. Our hope is that they’ll sharpen their technical skills, gain valuable experience, develop personally and professionally, and ultimately bring fresh perspectives to their future careers. The internship program has been so successful in the past that we’ve been lucky enough to hire several of them as full-time engineers, and each and every one of them have proven to be solid contributors to the product and team.

We talked to our two most recent interns, Antonio and Austen and asked them a few questions! 

What University are you attending?

Antonio: San Jose State University

Austen:The school I am attending right now is Antelope Valley College because of its engineering and software development programs.

What do you like most about working at MurCal?

Antonio: You get a lot of autonomy when it comes to designs and can often take a good amount of ownership over a project from beginning to end. There are also usually not too many barriers to communication. Engineers are often able to talk to people working in all parts of a company important to a project to be delivered to them, and internally, the nature of our relatively small size allows people to be in direct communication with both our president, our production team, and everyone else in the company with ease. 

Austen: Murcal looked like the best choice for experience because of its diverse job applications. You can be a software developer or an application engineer or do both.

What projects are you currently working on at MurCal?

Antonio:The mobile mining rig harness kit has been ongoing for months and has been the most significant project. Currently, my biggest focus is revamping up harnesses for FPT F34 engines to be more cost effective and work better for our customers.

Austen: As of right now I have been jumping around from doing field work with other engineers at different water stations and working on Node Red for the Municipal customers, so they can monitor their engines from any device with the internet.

Looking Back, what was your favorite project you've worked on?

Antonio: My first engine harness is probably my favorite one. It ended up being much more complex than anybody would have anticipated, so I had some good satisfaction after completing it. It was also a great opportunity to learn deeply about FPT engine harness design, which is now one of my main focuses as an applications engineer

Austen: So far the Node Red project is the best one because I get to look into the code and dissect how everything works, and put a whole new station online in there so I can make their lives easier.

What has been the most valuable lesson you have learned in your internship?

Antonio:Oftentimes, we run out of people to ask questions to and are left to figure things out on our own. As you grow into any engineering role, this gradually becomes more common, and is a great sign that you're growing into your role as you become a "subject matter expert." 

Austen: To ask for help anytime I was struggling. I come from past jobs where I did not have much need or option to get help. But in this internship I have learned that it's best to collaborate with others and ask for help or shortcuts. 

What impact did you feel like you had on MurCal?

Antonio: I was around during a weird transitional time where a lot of old engineers were leaving and new engineers joining. I was one of the only people who knew a lot of old practices, and I've done everything I can (especially in harness design) to make sure that everything that lived in the heads of engineers was documented for new engineers to use and learn from.

Austen: The biggest impact I feel like I have given is making the workload less for some of the engineers so they can focus more on other tasks, and improve the amount of detail they put into their own projects.

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Antonio: I'll definitely have fully graduated by then and possibly gone through graduate school, so I'll be an engineer at that point.

Austen: In five years I see myself with a Bachelor's degree in computer engineering with my career job at Edwards Air Force base, helping to build the software for their engines and systems.

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Thank you to all our amazing interns! We appreciate you being a part of the MurCal team and we know you have a bright future ahead of you.

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