Internship with Northrop Grumman
August 10th, 2021 by Lillian Tso
Interning with Northrop Grumman
This summer, I interned with Northrop Grumman Launch Vehicles as a System Engineer in Chandler, AZ. More specifically, I worked on verifying requirements for their defensive launch vehicles. My time was split into three different types of projects: programming tasks, systems engineering tasks, and mission planning tasks.
On top of all my Systems projects, I was able to learn Python, Linux, and Excel VBA over my internship; all three languages I have not worked with prior. It was amazing to get the opportunity to learn these skills and put them to good use. I ended up converting all of our team’s old MATLAB scripts on Linux to Python. In doing so, I was able to update all of our old procedures to access our scripts and update the code to make it more versatile and easier to use.
Outside of work, I was able to explore the hot and sunny state of Arizona. Every weekend, I decided to embrace the outdoors; I hiked Humphreys Peak— the highpoint of Arizona— and visited three national parks: Zion National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Joshua Tree National Park. I was also able to explore what Phoenix had to offer by attending the monthly “First Fridays” events and exploring the Musical Instrument Museum.
This was my first engineering internship, and it surpassed all my expectations of what an internship can be. I was able to work on projects I wanted to that impacted the company in positive ways. I was able to learn so many skills and meet so many different people at the same time. For me, the most rewarding part of my experience was how much I was able to push myself out of my comfort zone. I was able to conduct informational interviews with my coworkers once a week to learn more about Northrop Grumman and the defense industry as a whole. I was also able to get media trained and witness different functional testing of our launch vehicles. I made it a point to say “Yes” to every opportunity I was given, and then to find new opportunities to say “Yes” to.
