R&D Engineer Intern - Calcined Clay

JOB DESCRIPTION

Job Title :

Internship offer

R&D Engineer Intern

Calcined Clay

 Cement

WHO IS HOLCIM?

WHO ARE HOLCIM PEOPLE?

Holcim people are passionate about finding better ways to build. They embrace innovation and improvement with a pioneering spirit. They work as trusted partners, creating better solutions and experiences for their customers, communities, and colleagues.

YOUR HOLCIM EXPERIENCE

At Holcim, there are endless opportunities for you to play your part. Whether you’re in a technical, managerial, or frontline role, you can shape a career that works for you. With us you’ll have the chance to embrace the passion we share for our planet. You’ll be encouraged to seek out diverse perspectives, share your ideas and build the skills and connections you need to perform at your best. Because it’s only when we work together in a culture where everyone thrives that we can build the world we all want to live in. To find out more, visit www.holcim.com/careers. 

THE OPPORTUNITY – CONTEXT OF THE MISSIONS

The development of tomorrow's sustainable cement and reinforced concrete requires a decrease of the clinker content to minimize CO2 net emissions of the final product. Different Supplementary Cementitious Materials (SCM) with zero to negative carbon emissions (carbon sink) are developed at HIC. The optimization of these innovative low CO2 cements is based on linking phases assemblage after reaction to mechanical and physical properties. Because of the large range of sourcing and composition of SCM, unified measurement strategy and predictive tools are needed.

MISSIONS:

As part of your missions, you will drive the integration of a python tool for quantifying phase assemblage from experimental methods (XRD, XRF, TGA C/H). Specifically, you will focus on the following key objectives:

• Data Management & Database Architecture: Design and structure the database schemas (JSON) to store experimental raw data (XRD, XRF, TGA) alongside mineral metadata (stoichiometry, molar masses, densities).


• Multi-Tool Data Fusion & Mathematical Solver: Implement the core mass-balance linear algebra and global optimization algorithms in Python to simultaneously solve, from XRD, XRF, and TGA datasets, for phase assemblage, total amorphous fraction and amorphous composition (e.g., C-S-H gel, calcined clay).


• Method Benchmarking & Validation: Compare the elemental mass-balance output against current internal estimations based on ultra-nanocrystalline models and internal standards.


• Software Engineering & Package Development: Refactor existing scripts into a modular, production-ready Python package within an IDE environment, enforcing Git version control and unit testing.


• Experimental Benchmarking & Prototyping: Execute the validation protocol against existing dataset to establish error margins.


• UI & Dashboarding: Create an interactive dashboard to showcase tool outputs and phase development graphs to non-specialist R&D teams.