Internship / Master Thesis : Secured urban data exchange platform

Description

This internship focuses on the continued evolution of a secure, federated Urban Data Exchange platform. The platform is the outcome of several years of iterative development carried out through multiple previous internships. These iterations have produced a functional demonstrator and proof‑of‑concept (PoC), illustrating the feasibility of secure, metadata‑driven data exchange across organizations while preserving full data sovereignty.
The platform currently provides multiple core services:
•    A secure data exchange service supporting encrypted gateway‑to‑gateway transfers.
•    A secure computing model enabling controlled execution and orchestration workflows.
•    A metadata catalog powered by open‑source technologies for automated harvesting, governance, and discoverability.
•    A visualization service enabling exploration of available datasets.
Although the platform does not yet support real‑time or streaming data, it offers solid foundations for secure, static data exchange. All components are based exclusively on open‑source technologies, including Keycloak, OPA, OpenMetadata, PostgreSQL, Redis, Croc, and a Go‑based orchestration backend. Security remains central, relying on zero‑trust principles, encryption‑based data sovereignty, and a federated governance model.
 

Objectives
The main objective of this internship is to transition the current demonstrator into a more complete and robust MVP of the platform.  The goal is to consolidate the existing features, strengthen the architectural foundations, and bring the system closer to a cohesive, end to end functional state.
Key goals include:
•    Hardening the architecture and stabilizing platform components for production environments.
•    Improving reliability, monitoring, observability, and DevOps automation.
•    Enhancing the security model following zero‑trust and data‑at‑source principles.
•    Integrating a Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) system to support metadata harvesting, enrichment, semantic search, and intelligent data discovery.
 

Our offer
› A dynamic work and collaborative environment with a highly motivated multi-cultural and international sites team
› The chance to make a difference in peoples’ life by building innovative solutions
› Various internal coding events (Hackathon, Brownbags), see our technical blog
› Monthly After-Works organized per locations

Skills required
•    Strong programming skills and experience with modern development tooling, particularly in Python and Go.
•    Solid understanding of distributed systems, security models, and zero‑trust principles.
•    Motivation to explore advanced security paradigms, including Zero Trust Architecture and service‑mesh‑based security.
•    Familiarity with open‑source technologies such as Keycloak, OPA, OpenMetadata, PostgreSQL, Redis, and containerization ecosystems.
•    Knowledge of cloud platforms, with a preference for experience in Microsoft Azure.
•    Interest in AI/ML, including working with LLMs and Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
•    Strong motivation for system design, architecture, and secure data‑processing workflows in decentralized environments.