Sears to Locate in Gainesville and Partner with Engineering for Talent

Aerial photo of weil hall

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Leading integrated retailer Sears Holdings Corp. has selected Gainesville to establish its first “Center of Excellence,” which will provide University of Florida engineering undergraduates a first-of-its-kind opportunity to land internships centered on software development while keeping talent local, UF officials announced on March 18.

According to the press release, the plan calls for Sears Holdings to bring on 25 UF interns in the inaugural year of the program. The first group will begin this summer at Sears Holdings locations around the U.S.; this fall, Sears Holdings expects to open an office in Gainesville, where the interns would continue their work.  Students will initially work on development in the following areas:

  • Data analytics and engineering
  • Big Data and Hadoop, an open source software framework that supports the processing of large data sets in a distributed computing environment
  • Network and information security
  • Process analysis and design
  • Development using multiple technologies