Intern in Bosch Japan

Tokyo, the most populous and most prosperous prefecture of Japan, account for 19% of Japan’s GDP and where half of listed companies of Japan set their headquarter. Even more, all Fortune Global 500 companies have headquarters, branches or offices here. This not only means that here are the most job opportunities in Japan, but also denotes that it provides a huge number of internship positions for college students.

As society’s requirements for college graduates increase, academic ability is not the only criteria for new graduates, engineering skill, workplace communication and teamwork are also important when company seek potential employee. In my perspective, long-term internship is one of the most effective way to build up these abilities and help student well-prepare for the future career. Thus, in early this year (2021), I start to look for an engineer internship opportunity. And I was very fortunate to find a well-fitted position in Bosch Japan that I can work with regular employees in daily work routine.

Robert Bosch GmbH (Bosch for simplicity) is a global enterprise whose core business area across mobility, consumer goods, industrial technology, energy and building technology. Bosch’s German headquarters started in 1886, and this year is just the 110th anniversary of its Japan business starting. It’s interesting that I join Bosch mobility division at the point that this more than 100 years automotive industrial is undergoing drastic change. More special thing is the department I work, Cross-Domain Computing Solutions, is new division found 2020 to meet the challenge in this fast-growing industry.

From now, I’d like to dive into some of my responsibility and working items in Bosch. I work in group named Product Area Access to build Prefect Keyless system for Japan automobile manufacturers. Unlike most Japanese student participate hackathon-like internship, in Bosch, I enroll in the team and work with formal employee to solve problem in both business and engineering. I started my internship with translating technical documentation for customers and studying system architecture of our product. And I also did things like building demo system on a real car, collecting unit test data in plant and writing code to analyze performance. After I became familiar with product system and the work routine in the first month, I started to develop an interface for our demo system. This task almost runs through the rest of my internship phase. My research in university is mainly simulation and design algorithm, debugging code next to the vehicle is also a very novel experience for me. By the way, participating daily, weekly meeting and taking training are also part of my work contents.

My internship came to an end in August. I have learnt more than I expect during this internship. From writing business e-mail, communicating efficiently with colleagues, to developing on automotive system. As an international student, I believe this experience will help me to enter the workplace more smoothly after graduation.