Power Resources Forecasting Intern - Military veterans preferred

2025-05-06
Ava Community Energy
Other

/yr

  employee   contract


Oakland
California
94612
United States

Power Resources Forecasting Intern
Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Job posting will close Monday, April 28th.

About Ava Community Energy

Ava Community Energy (Ava) is a Joint Powers Authority comprised of Alameda County and its incorporated areas, and the cities of Lathrop, Stockton, and Tracy. Ava's charter is to provide its customers with low carbon, cost-effective electricity that integrates innovative energy products and maximizes local benefits through the development of local solutions, ranging from increasing access to rooftop solar to supporting the adoption of electric vehicles.

Culture and Commitment to Diversity

Ava believes in a vibrant culture that supports and nurtures a workplace that offers every individual the opportunity to attain professional goals and contribute to accomplishing our mission. We foster a culture of open communication, responsibility, curiosity, accountability, and teamwork. We want creative problem solvers who are excited to work in an entrepreneurial environment and grow our organization!

As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce that is reflective of our service area's rich culture and communities. We welcome a diversity of experiences, perspectives, and skills.

We strongly encourage people of all characteristics to apply and prohibit unlawful discrimination and harassment of any type based on age, religion, color, gender identity or expression, race, ancestry, or national origin, religion or creed, marital status, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information or characteristics, and those with a disability as protected by federal, state and local laws.

Position Summary

We're looking for a motivated, technically inclined intern (advanced undergraduate or master's level) to join our data science team. A large part of your role will focus on feature engineering and time-series forecasting within the wholesale power market context. You'll also be involved in model optimization, MLOps workflows, and continuous improvement of real-world predictive systems.

Position Details

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

  • Time-Series Forecasting & Feature Engineering
  • Extend existing feature selection modules (e.g., genetic algorithms, mutual information, PCA, stability selection) to uncover the most predictive features for time-series forecasting.
  • Collaborate with senior team members to continuously evaluate and iterate on how new features impact model performance and accuracy over various time windows.
  • Enhance the Existing ML Pipeline
  • Support cross-window training approaches (e.g., LightGBM with Optuna) adapted for time-series data.
  • Assist in improving data ingestion, cleaning, and transformation steps to ensure a scalable, memory-efficient pipeline that accommodates large volumes of wholesale power market data.
  • Model Exploration & Tuning
  • Integrate and tune additional models (tree-based, neural) specifically for time-series forecasting challenges.
  • Apply advanced hyperparameter optimization techniques to maintain and boost model accuracy for both short- and long-term forecasts.
  • Domain Context in the Wholesale Power Market
  • Leverage or quickly develop an understanding of wholesale power market dynamics—pricing, load forecasting, supply/demand factors—to inform feature design and model assumptions.
  • Work closely with domain experts to ensure forecasting models capture crucial industry-specific nuances.
  • Coding & Documentation Best Practices
  • Write modular, maintainable Python code; document core scripts, data pipelines, and feature engineering processes.
  • Collaborate via version control and CI/CD workflows, ensuring robust integration of new features and models.
  • Collaboration & MLOps Exposure
  • Learn how models and features are tracked, monitored, and deployed through MLflow or similar tools.
  • Engage with the team to continuously evaluate model outcomes in a production-like setting, iterating on both feature engineering and domain assumptions as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

  • Pursuing (or recently completed) a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Statistics, or related fields.
  • Foundational ML & Time-Series Proficiency:
  • Experience with Python data science libraries (NumPy, pandas, scikit-learn).
  • Familiarity with time-series forecasting methods (e.g., ARIMA, Prophet) or tree-based approaches for time-series data.
  • Understanding of model-building fundamentals (LightGBM, XGBoost).
  • Feature Engineering & Data Handling:
  • Skilled at exploring and applying different feature transformations.
  • Curiosity about advanced feature creation and selection techniques.
  • Wholesale Power Market Context
  • Wholesale power market experience (academic, personal projects, or professional) is a big plus; otherwise, an ability to quickly understand and apply industry-specific context will be crucial.
  • Math & Stats Fundamentals:
  • Comfortable interpreting model performance metrics and basic statistical measures.
  • Communication & Teamwork:
  • Willingness to collaborate, learn from feedback, and share progress clearly.

Preferred Qualifications (Nice-to-Have)

  • Experience with MLOps pipelines (MLflow, Docker, CI/CD).
  • Hands-on hyperparameter optimization (Optuna, Bayesian optimization, or others).
  • Practical exposure to deep learning frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow).
  • Prior work or strong interest in advanced feature engineering and feature selection.

Working Conditions and Stipend

The hourly rate for this position is $30 per hour.

This position will be based in Ava headquarters in Oakland, near BART. Ava's team has a hybrid approach inclusive of in-office and remote work. This role is expected to go into the office on Tuesday, Thursday, and the first Wednesday of the month.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Ava is dedicated to reasonably accommodate an applicant for known physical or mental disabilities so that the applicant may participate in the application process. We will engage in a timely, good-faith interactive process with any employee with a known physical or mental disability to identify potential reasonable accommodations, if any, to enable the employee to perform the essential functions of their position.

  • General office environment is primarily sedentary work which requires the following physical activities: standing, sitting, walking, reaching, lifting, finger dexterity, grasping, repetitive motions, talking, hearing and visual acuity.
  • The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 pounds.
  • The noise level is usually moderate.

Licenses/Certificates

  • Possession and continued maintenance of a valid class C California driver's license or the ability to provide alternate transportation and a safe driving record.

Working at Ava Community Energy

Ava is committed to complying with applicable laws, including the Americans with Disability Act and Fair Employment and Housing Act, ensuring equal employment opportunities to qualified individuals with a disability. Ava prohibits unlawful discrimination based on age, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or related medical conditions), genetic information or characteristics, gender identity, gender expression, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, creed, marital status, military or veteran status, sexual orientation, physical or mental disability, medical condition, or on any other basis prohibited by federal, state, or local laws. Ava strives to maintain a COVID-free workplace, being fully vaccinated is a condition of employment (exemptions will be evaluated by legal counsel).

The information contained herein has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees within this classification. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. The information also does not constitute either an expressed or implied contract, and these provisions are subject to change.






Equal employment opportunity, including veterans and individuals with disabilities.

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