Intern 2026: AI Hybrid Cloud Platforms Research Developer

Job Description:

Introduction

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.

Your role and responsibilities

We are looking for highly motivated students to join us as developer interns in ML (training and inference) for Summer 2026. In this role, you'll gain hands-on experience building the infrastructure powering machine learning platforms, model inference services, and intelligent agents. You'll work alongside experienced engineers and researchers to design, develop, and test components of modern Generative AI systems that developers and enterprises rely on. This internship is ideal for students interested in the research related engineering side of AI - from scaling model serving APIs to experimenting with emerging frameworks for AI agents.

What You'll Gain:
* Mentorship from engineers and researchers working on next-generation AI platforms
* Experience contributing to real-world AI system components
* Opportunity to strengthen development skills in a modern hybrid cloud environment
* A chance to explore how AI workflows are built, deployed, and scaled in practice

Required education
High School Diploma/GED

Preferred education
Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

* Currently pursuing a Bachelors or Masters in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field
* Strong programming skills in Python and/or Go
* Experience with containerization and microservices (Docker, Kubernetes, or similar)
* Familiarity with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and collaborative software development

Preferred technical and professional experience

* Exposure to AI agent frameworks (e.g., LangChain, AutoGen, Haystack, or similar)
* Practical knowledge of model serving APIs
* Understanding of distributed systems concepts for scaling AI workloads
* Experience with RESTful APIs development and integration
* Interest in benchmarking, profiling, or optimizing ML inference pipelines