Remote FPGA lab and experiment platform

About ASW Open R&D Internship Challenge

Africa Space Works is opening a hands-on internship challenge for students and early-career engineers who want to work on demanding space software, embedded systems, FPGA and AI problems. The program is built around practical engineering: internal repositories, cloud workspaces, selected FPGA cards, remote or office participation, weekly delivery discipline, and monthly technical reviews.

The common challenge is to build a safe test bench for a real-time camera-based tracking system. The system will use camera input, computer vision, FPGA and embedded processing, measurable validation, and controlled actuator-style outputs to detect and follow small moving targets in a controlled environment.

All tracks are connected. Track A enables execution, Track B proves performance, Track C builds the real-time hardware pipeline, and Track D builds the computer vision and AI tracking layer.

Role Overview - Track A: Remote FPGA Lab and Experiment Platform

As an intern on Track A, you will build the operating platform that allows the other teams to work efficiently. Your mission is to make the remote lab usable: engineers should be able to reserve boards, launch experiments, collect logs, retrieve artifacts, compare results, and understand what happened during each run.

This is not only a DevOps track. It is the mission-control layer of the R&D test bench. You will connect repositories, cloud execution, FPGA board access, experiment history, and simple dashboards so that camera, FPGA, testing and AI teams can work from the same reliable environment.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and establish the repository structure, execution workflow, and remote lab organization.
• Implement board booking, access rules, job launch scripts, and secure remote access to selected FPGA cards and test machines.
• Collect and organize logs, bitstreams, test videos, metrics, artifacts, run metadata and experiment outputs.
• Build simple dashboards that show experiment status, board availability, recent runs, failures, and useful engineering traces.
• Support Track B by making tests and regressions easy to launch and reproduce.
• Support Track C and Track D by giving them a stable way to run camera, FPGA, and tracking experiments.
• Participate in the weekly cadence: publish weekly objectives, push useful traces during the week, and present artifacts and metrics every Friday.

Requirements

• Strong motivation to work on demanding platform, cloud, DevOps and engineering infrastructure problems.
• Baseline knowledge of Linux, Docker, networking, Git workflows, CI/CD, and cloud or server execution.
• Good working knowledge of Python.
• Willingness to learn and use shell scripting, Rust and C when needed for tooling, automation, hardware integration or low-level interfaces.
• Ability to build clean internal tools that other engineers can actually use.
• Capacity for fast learning, consistent daily progress, and clear technical communication.
• Self-discipline to thrive in a remote or office environment with strict weekly delivery deadlines.

Selection, Prize, and Hiring

• Fast Selection: CV screening, technical task, and interview.
• Cash Prize: Top contributors generating reproducible, integrated, and high-quality reusable engineering output may be awarded a cash prize.
• Hiring Path: The best profiles demonstrating strong technical judgment and integration skills may be offered full-time or longer-term roles at ASW.