Summer Semester 2027 – fixed term of 3–6 months

As industrial Operational Technology (OT) systems continue to evolve, the centralized management and automated operation of edge devices are becoming increasingly important. The goal of this internship or thesis project is to design, implement and evaluate a management platform for industrial devices based on Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, Azure Arc and Microsoft Hyper-V. You will develop a practical solution that can be integrated into existing Windows infrastructure and meets the requirements of SICK’s production environment in terms of security, scalability, maintainability and availability.

YOUR TASKS:

• You analyze existing IT and OT infrastructures and derive requirements for a centralized management platform for industrial edge devices.

• You design and implement a proof of concept based on Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, Azure Arc and Microsoft Hyper-V.

• You integrate industrial devices into Azure Arc and develop concepts for their centralized management and monitoring.

• You design solutions for centralized patch management and the automated installation and updating of operating systems and software packages.

• You develop concepts for automated Windows image deployment and recovery, as well as disaster recovery.

• You explore options for managing and orchestrating Hyper-V-based virtual machines on industrial edge devices.

• You assess how the solution can be transferred to existing Windows infrastructure and evaluate its suitability for deployment in SICK’s production environment.

• You evaluate the solution in terms of implementation effort, benefits, scalability, security and operating costs, and develop recommendations for a potential production rollout.

YOUR PROFILE:

• Studies in computer science, technical computer science, business information systems, electrical engineering or a related field

• Interest in cloud technologies, edge computing, and IT and OT infrastructure

• Basic knowledge of Microsoft Windows and Windows-based environments

• Initial experience with Azure, Azure Arc or comparable cloud management platforms is an advantage

• Knowledge of virtualization technologies, ideally Microsoft Hyper-V, is an advantage

• Programming or scripting skills, for example in PowerShell or Python

• Interest in IT security, system administration and automated infrastructure processes

• Independent, structured and analytical approach to work, combined with good command of English