AI Software Engineer Intern 2027

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.

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.

Program Start Date: May 03, 2027
Program Duration: 12-16 Months
Candidates must be available to participate for the full duration of the internship.

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.

• 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.

• 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.

In 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?

IBM’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.

Must have the ability to work in Canada without sponsorship.

This role will involve working with technology that is covered by Export Regulations sanctions. If you are a Foreign National from any of the following US sanctioned countries (Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia regions of Ukraine) on a work permit, you are not eligible for employment in this position.

The salary range for the position is based on a full-time schedule. Your ultimate salary within this range may vary depending on your job-related skills and experience for this position.