R&D Sustainability Specialist Intern

Your role and responsibilities

Join the Global R&D Sustainability team in ABB's Smart Power Division, within the Center of Excellence (CoE) for LCA & Eco-design. As an intern, you will work alongside a multidisciplinary group of engineers and sustainability experts, gaining hands-on exposure to product sustainability, eco-design, and circular economy practices applied to real hardware products.

This is an opportunity to put your academic background into practice, contributing to meaningful projects while being mentored by senior specialists in the field.

In this role, you’ll help run what runs the world by taking on meaningful work that drives real impact, as you will be accountable for:

• Support Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) activities by assisting the team in data collection, modelling, and interpretation of results — learning how environmental hotspots are identified and addressed in real product development contexts.
• Contribute to Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) projects, supporting the team across the full process: from organizing and collecting input data, through documentation preparation, up to supporting third-party verification activities.
• Support primary data collection from suppliers, reaching out to the supply chain to gather material, energy, and process data needed for LCA and EPD studies — gaining direct exposure to supply chain sustainability challenges.
• Conduct regulatory and scientific landscaping on product End-of-Life (EoL) scenarios — reviewing legislation, industry standards, and academic literature on EoL modelling approaches (recycling, reuse, recovery) and summarizing findings for the team.
• Monitor emerging trends in product sustainability, circularity, and eco-design, contributing to internal knowledge sharing and team discussions.

• You have a Bachelor's or Master's student in environmental, mechanical, electrical engineering, chemistry, materials engineering, or related sciences — or recent graduate.
• You have an academic background or coursework exposure to LCA, sustainability, or eco-design topics.
• Familiarity with LCA concepts; experience with LCA tools (e.g. SimaPro) is a plus.
• You're at ease communicating in English
• You are curious, proactive, and eager to learn in a technical R&D environment, working in a global context with stakeholders from multiple countries.
• Team-oriented with good communication and organizational skills.
• You are passionate about sustainability, circularity, and innovation.

More about us

ABB Smart Power provides energy distribution solutions for data centers, industrial and manufacturing plants, critical infrastructure and commercial buildings. The Division’s technical teams work closely with industry partners, delivering advanced solutions that support rapid growth, energy transition, and sustainability objectives. The Division’s portfolio includes industrial circuit breakers, low-voltage systems, motor starting applications, and safety devices like switches and relays. Its Power Protection unit supports the world’s largest data center companies with advanced energy-efficient UPS solutions. The Division’s ABB Ability™ Energy Manager provides a scalable, easy-to-use platform that helps organizations save energy and reduce CO2 emissions.

Join us. Be part of the team where progress happens, industries transform, and your work shapes the world. Run What Runs the World.

#ABBCareers #RunwithABB