Code. Build.
Make it work.

I recommend Eric Hedengren for a future role at Tesla, without reservation. I supervised Eric during his summer 2026 internship at Tesla's Gulf Coast Lithium Refinery. In that time he performed at the level I expect of a strong, experienced full-time engineer: he owned ambiguous technical work, delivered systems colleagues actually use, and elevated the capacity of those around him.

Eric takes on challenging, loosely specified problems, reasons from first principles, and ships solutions with unusual speed and quality. He founded our site's first AI community, grew it to more than one hundred members in two months, and built the enablement program himself. He delivered tools that gave a broad set of staff plain-English access to core plant systems and enabled more than ten non-developers to ship production applications, replacing paper workflows. The same approach was adopted at a second Tesla site within weeks thanks to his proactive outreach. He is equally strong on plant-critical work: he led a machine-learning digital twin of the process, restored a process historian serving a large user base and made recovery repeatable, and reduced operational noise so real failures could stand out.

What distinguishes Eric as much as the systems he built is how he treats other people as part of the product. He works with respect, shares information freely, and designs for colleagues who are not software engineers. Non-developers were able to ship solutions because Eric invested in coaching and tools they could actually use. He publishes guides, runbooks, and task instructions so others can move without waiting on him, coaches builders across Tesla organizations, and wrote a deliberate handover so the work continued after his internship. After briefing senior leadership, he received unprompted praise, consistent with my own assessment.

Eric is technically sharp, unusually productive, and easy to work with. He experiments, measures, and iterates. He shows up, follows through, and prioritizes work that unblocks the mission. If we have a return internship or full-time role that needs an engineer who can own ambiguous systems work and teach others to do the same, Eric should be near the top of that list.

Eric has an incredible drive and a get-it-done attitude that moves things forward. We worked together on a challenging modeling and optimization problem, and his expertise working with agents, coupled with his engineering problem-solving skills, helped us compress our schedule by ~30%. More importantly, the tools he built and trained us on will continue to compound efficiency gains for our team. That’s the kind of impact you can expect from Eric.

I recommend Eric Hedengren without reservation.

Eric served as a Software Engineering Intern at Tesla’s Lithium Refinery from May through August 2026. As Senior Cost and Optimization Program Manager at the refinery, I worked with him closely for the full length of his internship.

Eric joined as a software engineering intern and, within weeks, became the site’s resident AI expert. When he arrived in May, AI was barely part of our day-to-day work. By August, it was in active use across nearly every workflow at the refinery - from backend support and finance programs to live monitoring of the refining process, where it helped us identify and correct issues as they happened.

He did not simply introduce tools. Eric built the use cases and the AI program at the lithium refinery from the ground up. He translated operational problems into practical solutions, earned the trust of operators and support teams, and made AI something people actually used rather than something they only discussed. That combination of technical depth and operational judgment is uncommon at any level, and exceptional in an intern.

His reach went well beyond our site. Eric was a driving force for the broader Cell organization to adopt AI. I have never seen an intern make this kind of impact in so short a time. That impact will continue at Tesla well after his internship.

I recommend Eric in the strongest possible terms. The same qualities that allowed him to stand up an AI program in a complex manufacturing environment - speed, curiosity, systems thinking, and the ability to bring people along - are exactly the qualities that make someone effective in supply chain. I am confident he will be as impactful in that work as he was with us.

Please feel free to contact me if I can provide any additional information.

Eric interned with us at Tesla, and he's one of the highest-impact interns I've ever seen in such a short time.

We were at a critical moment as a company, trying to understand AI and how to actually use it. Eric didn’t just talk about it. He took a plant full of people who knew nothing about code and got us building real, full-service products that are already changing plant process and productivity.

What sets him apart is how he thinks. He can take a big, messy problem, break it into bite-size pieces, and see the next action clearly. He doesn’t get lost in the noise, and that clarity is why so many people around him were able to go from zero to shipping things that matter.

I’d recommend Eric to any company. He’d be an immense asset to any team lucky enough to hire him.

I worked with Eric when he joined our optimization team, a group with deep technical and research expertise, all PhDs. He came from mechanical engineering and ramped up quickly - coding, collaborating, and contributing real value in a short time. Strong technically, practical with AI, and great to work with across multiple projects. I recommend him highly.

Eric adapted well to a very dynamic environment. I recognize many polished skills from collaboration, professionalism, work process improvements, etc. But the absolute most impressive was the way he was able to get people stoked about AI to a degree that a large number of employees were leaning on him to start AI projects. In a refinery environment, change, especially technology changes people are typically reluctant to, but Eric was able to connect folks to the value that it would bring so now change is happening at a pace like we’ve never seen before.

Eric made such an amazing impact on my understanding and ability to leverage agentic Ai. Immediately upon arriving at Tesla, Eric dug in and established himself as a subject-matter expert. His impact and the knowledge he shared with the team have clearly had, and will continue to have, a positive effect on the business. Equally important was Eric's warm personality and team-focused dedication. He held daily office hours to help anyone with questions, and was always willing to take time away from his own projects to help others learn a new skill or implement a project of their own.

I initially watched as Eric helped others on site learn Ai and quickly begin creating some truly amazing tools that had real value. My knowledge of agentic Ai was admittedly less than desired at the time. Eric sat with me and showed me how to start leveraging AI to build tools that immediately improved my day-to-day workflow. He did so in a way that was easy to understand and implement. He also gave me the knowledge to experiment and the direction to dive deeper, which has boosted my productivity and value to the business. I am now able to use agentic Ai to bring a thought or concept to coded reality, test, refine, and deploy it in short order.

Thank you, Eric, for being a great teammate and exemplifying the dedication and willingness to help others that makes a difference. I truly wish you the best in all of your future endeavors and hope to see some of the great things you do!

Eric has been a force multiplier at Tesla, particularly in leveraging AI tools. He proactively reached out and made sure we connected during a visit to GFTX, and volunteered his time to help me connect to the new AI tools. I had been meaning to do this for some time, but Eric walked me through the steps and got me started. I've shared the website he created to guide people through setting up AI tools at least a dozen times and my team's AI use has exploded since his visit. Great job Eric! I hope you come back to Tesla soon and let me know if you ever want to dabble in Supply Chain.