2026 Intern: Software Engineer – Ai - powered Automation

IBM Research Software Engineer

IBM Research takes responsibility for technology and its role in society. Working in IBM Research means you'll join a team who invent what's next in computing, always choosing the big, urgent and mind-bending work that endures and shapes generations. Our passion for discovery, and excitement for defining the future of tech, is what builds our strong culture around solving problems for clients and seeing the real world impact that you can make. IBM's product and technology landscape includes Research, Software, and Infrastructure. Entering this domain positions you at the heart of IBM, where growth and innovation thrive.

At IBM Research, we invent things that matter to the world. Today, we are pioneering the most promising and disruptive technologies that will transform industries and society, including the future of AI, Blockchain and Quantum Computing. We are driven to discover. With more than 3,000 researchers in 12 labs located across six continents, IBM Research is one of the world's largest and most influential corporate research labs. Artificial intelligence is having a profound impact on all aspects of our lives and is transforming how work is conducted in every industry. Today, AI systems are enabling businesses to personalize services, converse with customers, automate operations, optimize workflows, predict demand, and recommend next best actions. A common thread to our ambitious AI and watsonx Research agenda is to understand how AI systems and algorithms can be designed responsibly and produce effective outcomes to their enterprise users.

In your role as a Research Software Engineer, you will interact with the brightest minds in AI and will help transform AI research ideas into scalable, robust systems that solve real-world problems and help us advance our research and development agenda on artificial intelligence including areas such Natural Language Processing, Distributed (Edge) AI, Trusted AI, Scalable Data Engineering, AI for Business and IT Automation, AI Applications, AI Security, AI Hardware, Automated AI, Conversational AI and API Composition and Orchestration. You have a proven interest and experience in implementing innovative software solutions and applications. In your role as AI Research Software Engineer, you will work in close collaboration with other researchers and engineers to create, maintain and support world-class applications and/or infrastructure in support of our research and development agenda on artificial intelligence. This may also include any research related to your project. You will also deliver production level-code to support the commercialization of the resulting assets. Demonstrated communication skills are essential.

Required technical and professional expertise:

• Programming skills in Python, Java, C++/C etc.
• Backend storage technologies such as SQL and Non-SQL databases (Postgres, MongoDB, Cloudant, ElasticSearch etc.)
• Experience in Kubernetes CI/CD tools and operators, IBM Cloud and machine learning training pipelines
• Software engineering practices including agile techniques
• System building/debugging/testing skills

Preferred technical and professional experience:

• Machine learning techniques and machine learning toolkits such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, scikit-learn etc. including programming on GPUs
• Experience in web application development and frameworks including HTML, CSS and JavaScript, JQuery, React, Flask, Node.js etc.
• Qualitative and quantitative user research and user-centric design
• Solving analytical problems using rigorous and quantitative approaches
• Analyzing large scale data from a variety of sources
• Previous experience publishing scientific results, e.g. at NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, IJCAI, ACL, AAAI, KDD, CHI, IUI, CSCW or similar
• Knowledge in one or more of the following topics: large language models, finetuning algorithms (e.g., LoRA, DPO, etc.), reinforcement learning, model architectures (e.g., transformers, state-space models, etc.), LLM-based agents, agentic workflows, multi-agent systems, RAG, agent frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI, etc.), time series data

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.