Data Scientist Intern

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Intern FAYETTEVILLE, AR, US

Join our growing team and discover why Summit Utilities, Inc. continues to earn national and regional recognition as an employer of choice. Our recognitions include Best Places to Work in Maine (2019–2025);
Best Places to Work in Arkansas (2020, 2023, 2025);
Best Places to Work in Oklahoma (2022–2025);
Best Places to Work in Missouri (2023 and 2026);
Best Places to Work in Colorado (2025);
Forbes America’s Best Small Employers (2023); and, most recently, Proud and Purposeful Employer (2026).

Summit is a growing natural gas utility providing safe, reliable, and clean burning natural gas service to homes and businesses in Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Being part of the Summit team means embracing excellence and innovation, committing to safety each and every day, and doing all that we can to serve each other, our customers, and the communities where we live.

We aim to bring warmth and energy to everything we do.

We have an exciting opportunity open for a Data Scientist Intern based in Fort Smith, Fayetteville, or Little Rock, AR.

POSITION SUMMARY

Summit Utilities is seeking a Data Scientist Intern to support the development of data science solutions that enable safe, reliable, and efficient natural gas utility operations. Working under close guidance from experienced data scientists and AI professionals, the intern will assist with data exploration, feature engineering, model development, and the communication of analytical findings across a range of operational and business use cases, including field operations optimization, asset health and preventative maintenance, damage prevention, climate analysis and weather normalization, gas supply planning, usage forecasting, and customer segmentation.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Assist in building, validating, and iterating statistical, machine learning, and optimization models supporting natural gas demand forecasting, weather normalization, asset health and preventative maintenance, field operations optimization, and customer segmentation.
• Support exploratory data analysis, data profiling, and feature engineering across work order, weather and climate, SCADA, pipeline telemetry, billing, and gas usage data.
• Contribute to model development pipelines in Microsoft Fabric and assist with data quality checks and validation of model inputs and outputs.
• Develop clear visualizations and quantitative summaries, and document analytical logic, data sources, and assumptions for the team.
• Complete an assigned project and present the results to the AI and Enterprise Data teams and leadership.

EDUCATION AND WORK EXPERIENCE

• Currently enrolled in a bachelor's or master's degree program in Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Operations Research, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related quantitative field; rising junior or senior undergraduate standing, or current graduate enrollment, preferred.
• Coursework, academic projects, or prior internship experience involving statistics, machine learning, or quantitative analytics.
• Exposure to the model development process — data preparation, feature engineering, training, and evaluation
• Familiarity with cloud data platforms such as Microsoft Fabric, Azure, Snowflake, or Databricks are a plus but not required.

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, ABILITIES

• Working knowledge of Python for data analysis (pandas, Num Py, scikit-learn, matplotlib/seaborn) and foundational SQL skills.
• Understanding of core statistical and machine learning concepts, including regression, classification, model validation, and…