Technical Program Manager Intern
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Job Description
Tesla
About the Company and Job Description
The Internship Recruiting Team at Tesla is passionate about recognizing emerging talent. Their year-round program places the best students in positions where they will grow both technically and personally, working closely with their Manager, Mentor, and team. The program provides an experience that allows interns to experience life at Tesla by giving them projects that are critical to their team’s success.
Tesla is seeking a highly motivated and detail-oriented Technical Program Manager Intern to support efforts in driving virtual power plant (VPP) adoption using Tesla’s grid services cloud platform and suite of residential products, including Powerwall and EV charging. This position will support innovative work in the energy transition and reports to the Staff Technical Program Manager for Virtual Power Plants (VPP), Residential Energy.
As a Technical Program Manager intern for VPPs, you will be responsible for launching programs that allow Tesla product owners to earn money with the power they share to the grid. You will launch new programs from initial design to go-live, collaborating across internal and external stakeholders and executing various technical tasks with minimal supervision. This position is entrepreneurial and the candidate will be expected to not only execute on assigned duties, but to also design and document new business processes and to drive further innovation to drive scalable solutions that deliver best-in-class customer experience.
What You’ll Do
• Manage a portfolio of VPP programs, acting as primary point-of-contact for each program
• Lead new program launches from initial design to go-live, validating key milestones are achieved punctually, resolving bottlenecks, and communicating risks to relevant stakeholders
• Support external partners who operate VPPs with Tesla Products, advocating standard scalable solutions, answering technical questions, and ensuring issues are addressed and resolved in a timely manner
• Be an expert on the technical tools leveraged for VPP residential energy products, including Powerwall, and understand their benefits and limitations sufficient to communicate to partners and utility stakeholders
• Document operation procedures and program details, supporting the longevity of the business and providing updates to senior management on partner performance, and project status
• Identify product improvements that increase scale, improve operational efficiency, and provide better experiences for customers and partners
• Coordinate collaboration between business development, product, engineering, support, external partners and utility stakeholders to ensure team’s goals are aligned with company priorities
What You’ll Bring
• Ability to learn practical technical skills quickly and leverage them to perform daily tasks including but not limited to: create/manage tickets in JIRA, run SQL Queries on databases, executing scripts, submitting Github Pull Requests, and Linux command lines
• Comfortable managing multiple projects with a high degree of complexity
• Excellent communication and presentation abilities to effectively engage with diverse stakeholders, including engineers, operations/support, business, partners, and utility stakeholders
• Be able to have discussions with Product and Engineering teams, beyond your own technical expertise, sufficient to understand expected behavior of complex solutions, and propose new features that can be implemented with least overall effort
• Strong interest in energy industry, including utility operations, grid management, and renewable energy integration
• Ability to think strategically and creatively to identify opportunities and overcome challenges in the VPP adoption space
• Experience with software, Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), and power utilities is a strong plus, but not required for candidates who are quick learners
Important Dates and Considerations
• The position is expected to start in August 2025 and continue through the entire Fall term (i.e., through December) or into early Spring 2026 if available.
• A minimum of 12 weeks, full-time (40 hours/week), is required for most internships.
• International students using CPT must consult with their school to ensure they can work 40 hours per week.
