Summer 2025 Intern

Job Description

Hard Disk drives are remarkable devices in which the reader/writer “flies” approximately 1nm above a disk at speeds up to 80 miles per hour in a sealed enclosure.  Reliable long-term drive operation does not happen by accident.  Chemical Integration is responsible for ensuring the materials in the drive are chemically compatible over the life of the drive, which requires selecting materials that produce minimal amounts of outgassing and particle generation, engineering the ability to filter out chemicals and particles before they cause trouble, and developing strategies to maintain gas and humidity content of the drive environment within specified limits for several years.  WD is hiring an engineering intern for Chemical Integration activities in our HDD Product Development Engineering team. Ideal candidates will have recently earned or are pursuing a BS or advanced degrees in related scientific fields.

The Chemical Integration internship responsibilities include:

• Learn and understand disk drives and components.
• Measure gas composition in sealed disk drives and in test containers.
• Perform analytical measurements on particle and organic filtration inside the drives.
• Interact with the mechanical team to optimize the design for best filtration performance.

Qualifications

Applicants should have three or more years in college toward a degree in Material Science, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry or related scientific fields. Candidates for an advanced degree in the related fields are preferred.

Applicant should have had exposure to concepts of absorption, adsorption, and equilibrium versus rate-dependent phenomena, and should have strong hands-on laboratory experience. Exposure to particle size and particle counting measurement equipment is a plus.

Experience in programming and mathematical tools will be helpful.