Introduction
At IBM Software, we transform client challenges into solutions. Building the world's leading AI-powered, cloud-native products that shape the future of business and society. Our legacy of innovation creates endless opportunities for IBMers to learn, grow, and make an impact on a global scale. Working in Software means joining a team fueled by curiosity and collaboration. You'll work with diverse technologies, partners, and industries to design, develop, and deliver solutions that power digital transformation. With a culture that values innovation, growth, and continuous learning, IBM Software places you at the heart of IBM's product and technology landscape. Here, you'l have the tools and opportunities to advance your career while creating software that changes the world.
Your role and responsibilities
This is a 16-week Co-Op position designed for actively enrolled undergraduate students who are interested in gaining hands-on, practical experience in their field while contributing to real IBM projects. To be eligible, candidates must be currently enrolled at an accredited university and able to pause their coursework for the duration of the Co-Op, as students may not be enrolled in classes while participating. This role requires full-time availability (40 hours per week) during the Spring 2027 semester between Jan 19 - May 7. Eligible candidates should also be available to join IBM in a full-time role between December 2027 and August 2028 upon successful completion of their degree.
Build AI for the systems the world relies on. At IBM Z, our technology supports the transactions and data behind banking, payments, and global commerce. We are bringing AI into that foundation to help developers build faster, simplify complex operations, and solve problems where reliability, security, and performance matter.
As an AI Software Engineer Intern, you will work alongside experienced engineers to turn advances in large language models into useful software. Depending on your team, you could build an agent that helps diagnose system issues, connect AI to enterprise data and tools, or create a simpler way for developers to work with complex systems. Bring your ideas, experiment, and help take a feature from prototype through testing and refinement.
What You'll Do:
- Design, build, and test AI-powered features that address real developer and client needs, with guidance from experienced engineers.
- Integrate LLMs, APIs, and enterprise data into applications, exploring agent workflows, tool calling, and retrieval where they fit the problem.
- Write clear specifications and effective prompts, use AI development tools thoughtfully, and review and test the code they produce.
- Evaluate AI behavior with realistic test cases, measure quality and performance, and improve how applications handle incorrect outputs and failures.
- Debug across model interactions, application code, APIs, and underlying systems to understand root causes and build reliable solutions.
- Collaborate through Git, code reviews, and technical discussions; document your work and iterate on feedback.
Location Flexibility: By applying to this requisition, you acknowledge and agree to be considered for any of the listed locations associated with this position and are willing to work at the location where you are ultimately assigned.
Required education
High School Diploma/GED
Preferred education
Bachelor's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
Must be actively enrolled in a Bachelor's degree program at the time of application and returning to complete the degree after the co-op. - Available to start full-time between December 2027 and August 2028.
- Available to work full-time (40 hours/week) at an IBM location for 16 weeks between Jan 19 - May 7.
- Co-op requires a full-time commitment; students should not be enrolled in concurrent coursework during the co-op term.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals, including data structures, algorithms, software design, and testing.
- Proficiency in Python and experience building applications or services that integrate APIs.
- Hands-on experience building an application or working prototype with LLMs. You can explain what you built, how you integrated the model, and how you tested its behavior. Experience may come from personal, academic, open-source, or internship projects.
- A systematic debugging mindset: you can investigate failures, test assumptions, and reason about how application code, data, models, and underlying systems interact.
- Ability to translate a problem into clear requirements, prompts, and testable acceptance criteria, and critically evaluate AI-generated code and responses.
- Familiarity with Git, clear technical communication, and the ability to learn quickly and collaborate on a team.
Preferred technical and professional experience
- Experience in one or more of the following areas is a plus. You do not need experience with every technology listed.
- AI agents and tool or function calling; retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), embeddings, vector databases, or Model Context Protocol (MCP).
- Independent AI projects, open-source contributions, or experiments beyond assigned coursework that demonstrate initiative and thoughtful engineering decisions.
- Additional programming experience in JavaScript/TypeScript or Go, and familiarity with distributed systems or microservices.
- Operating system concepts such as concurrency, multithreading, and memory management; relational databases and SQL.
- Cloud and container technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, or OpenShift; observability, search, or real-time data processing tools such as OpenSearch or Kafka.
- AI evaluation, anomaly detection, or experience measuring and improving model accuracy, latency, and reliability.
We are especially interested in what you have built and learned. Where available, include a project link, repository, demo, or a brief description of your contribution and the technical challenges you worked through.
ABOUT BUSINESS UNITIBM Software infuses core business operations with intelligence-from machine learning to generative AI-to help make organizations more responsive, productive, and resilient. IBM Software helps clients put AI into action now to create real value with trust, speed, and confidence across digital labor, IT automation, application modernization, security, and sustainability. Critical to this is the ability to make use of all data, because AI is only as good as the data that fuels it. In most organizations data is spread across multiple clouds, on premises, in private datacenters, and at the edge. IBM's AI and data platform scales and accelerates the impact of AI with trusted data, and provides leading capabilities to train, tune and deploy AI across business. IBM's hybrid cloud platform is one of the most comprehensive and consistent approach to development, security, and operations across hybrid environments-a flexible foundation for leveraging data, wherever it resides, to extend AI deep into a business.
YOUR LIFE @ IBMIn a world where technology never stands still, we understand that, dedication to our clients success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better.
Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment everyday, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.
Our IBMers are growth minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide on-going feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers. The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions everyday is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome focused approach within everything that they do.
Are you ready to be an IBMer?
ABOUT IBMIBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world.
Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organizations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.
At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world.
IBM 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, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.
OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILSSupplemental 1 employees may be eligible for up to 8 paid holidays, minimum of 56 hours paid sick time and the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan. IBM offers paid family medical leave and disability benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law.
This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 15 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.
We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.
The compensation range and benefits for this position are based on a full-time schedule for a full calendar year. The salary will vary depending on your job-related skills, experience and location. Pay increment and frequency of pay will be in accordance with employment classification and applicable laws. For part time roles, your compensation and benefits will be adjusted to reflect your hours. Benefits may be pro-rated for those who start working during the calendar year.
THIS POSTING IS NOT FOR A CURRENT VACANCY BUT THE EMPLOYER IS SEEKING RESUMES TO REVIEW IN THE FUTURE WHEN JOBS BECOME AVAILABLE.
