Chemical Engineering Intern

Chemical Engineering Intern, P&ID Work (Paid, Part-Time, Flexible)

Verno | Boston, MA (remote is fine) | 10-15 hrs/week | Paid hourly | Through Fall 2026

About us

Verno is a startup founded out of Harvard Business School. We build AI software that generates, edits, and checks P&IDs for engineering firms and industrial operators. If you've ever spent hours redlining drawings or chasing down a tag mismatch across revisions, that's the work we're automating. We're already running a design partnership with a large North American EPC firm and our system is processing real drawings from real projects.

The founding team is an ex-Blue Origin ML engineer (now at Harvard Business School) and a technical co-founder. You'd be working directly with both of us, not with a program coordinator.

The job

Our models detect equipment, instruments, lines, and tags on industrial P&IDs. They're good but not perfect, and we need a chemical engineer to tell us where they're wrong. Concretely:

• Review AI-detected symbols and connectivity on real P&IDs and correct the errors
• Build out the labeled data that our pipeline trains and evaluates on
• Tell us when something doesn't make engineering sense, like a control loop that's wired wrong or a spec break in a weird place. This feedback shapes the product.
• Sit in on technical discussions if you want to. You'll see how an AI startup gets built from the inside.

The hours average 10-15 a week but it won't be even. Some weeks will be heavier, some lighter, and we can work around exams and classes. In return we'd ask for some flexibility when we're pushing toward a customer deadline.

Who we're looking for

You need to actually know P&IDs. Not "I saw them in one class" but comfortable reading instrument bubbles, line specs, valve symbols, and equipment tags without looking everything up. Coursework in process design or a co-op/internship at an EPC, chemical plant, or similar is the usual way people get there.

Beyond that, we want someone who is interested in where AI is going in chemical engineering and wants to learn it by doing it rather than reading about it. We're a two-person company. Nobody is going to hand you a syllabus. If you're the type who takes a loosely defined goal, figures out the ambiguous parts yourself, and comes back with results and good questions, you'll do well here. If you need daily check-ins and detailed instructions, this probably isn't the right fit, and that's okay.

Why bother

Honestly, the pay is fine but that's not the reason to do this. The reason is that AI for engineering documentation is moving fast and very few chemical engineering students have hands-on experience with it. You'd graduate with that experience plus a direct line to founders who will vouch for your work. There's also room for the role to grow if things go well, since we're scaling up.

To apply

Send your resume and a few sentences about a process system or P&ID you've worked with and what was interesting or annoying about it. We read these, and it matters more than your GPA.