Software Developer - Spring Co-Op 2027 - Cambridge

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'll 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 while contributing to real IBM engineering 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 January 19 and May 7, 2027. 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. We are looking for Software Developer Co-op students to join an engineering team building technologies for AI agents, large language models, evaluation, observability, optimization, and cloud-native AI systems. As a Co-op student, you will work alongside experienced IBM engineers to design, build, test, and operate software used to understand and improve the behavior of AI applications. Depending on the project, you may contribute to SDKs, APIs, distributed backend services, developer tools, user interfaces, or infrastructure. This role is designed for students who are passionate about software engineering and interested in the rapidly evolving intersection of AI, cloud infrastructure, distributed systems, and developer platforms. Prior experience with AI agents is not required. We value strong software fundamentals, technical curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly. You will gain hands-on experience working on production systems, modern cloud-native technologies, and engineering challenges associated with deploying and improving AI applications at scale.

What You'll Do

• Support the design, development, testing, and debugging of software across front-end, back-end, infrastructure, and full-stack environments.
• Build capabilities that help developers evaluate, observe, debug, benchmark, and optimize AI agents and generative AI applications.
• Work with large language models and AI agents to analyze behaviors such as tool usage, responses, execution traces, latency, quality, and cost.
• Help develop automated evaluation and testing systems for AI applications, including test-case generation, behavioral metrics, benchmarking, and regression testing.
• Build services and APIs that collect, process, and analyze telemetry and evaluation data from distributed AI applications.
• Contribute to SDKs and integrations that connect with different AI models, agent runtimes, and development frameworks.
• Explore techniques for improving the quality and efficiency of AI systems through prompt optimization, model selection, tool optimization, and automated experimentation.
• Work with a variety of programming languages depending on the project, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C++, Go, Rust, Swift, Kotlin, or others.
• Help build user interfaces using frameworks such as React, or contribute to backend services, APIs, and distributed systems.
• Work with cloud and container technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, REST APIs, and cloud-native services.
• Use Git and other version-control, CI/CD, and collaboration tools.
• Participate in code reviews, technical design discussions, Agile development, and collaboration with engineers, researchers, product managers, and designers.
• Explore emerging technologies in agentic AI, LLM evaluation, observability, optimization, automation, and cloud-native development.

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 per week at an IBM location for 16 weeks between January 19 and May 7, 2027.
• The Co-op requires a full-time commitment; students should not be enrolled in concurrent coursework during the Co-op term.

Transferable skills and experience from coursework, internships, research, personal projects, or open-source contributions are encouraged.

• Coursework or project experience in software development using at least one programming language.
• Familiarity with fundamental computer science concepts such as data structures, algorithms, debugging, APIs, and software design.
• Exposure to front-end or back-end technologies such as React, Node.js, Python, Java, SQL, Go, or similar technologies.
• Experience using Git or a similar version-control system.
• Interest in AI systems, large language models, AI agents, cloud computing, containers, distributed systems, or developer tooling.
• Strong analytical thinking, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to collaborate effectively and learn new technologies quickly in a team environment

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience experimenting with large language models, generative AI, or AI agents.
• Familiarity with AI or agent development frameworks such as LangGraph, LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar technologies.
• Exposure to concepts such as LLM evaluation, tracing, observability, benchmarking, prompt engineering, or model optimization.
• Experience with cloud services such as IBM Cloud, AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Familiarity with REST APIs and relational or NoSQL databases.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, or other container technologies.
• Familiarity with observability technologies such as OpenTelemetry, distributed tracing, metrics, and logging.
• Exposure to CI/CD pipelines, automation tools, or cloud-native deployment practices.
• Personal, research, or open-source projects that demonstrate creativity, initiative, and technical curiosity.
• Understanding of Agile software development methods.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM 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 @ IBM

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?

ABOUT IBM

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.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS

Supplemental 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.

IBM will not be providing visa sponsorship for this position now or in the future. Therefore, in order to be considered for this position, you must have the ability to work without a need for current or future visa sponsorship.

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.

Job Title

Software Developer - Spring Co-Op 2027 - Cambridge

Date posted

29-Sep-2026

Job ID

134974

City / Township / Village

Cambridge

State / Province

Massachusetts

Country

United States

Work arrangement

Hybrid

Area of work

Software Engineering

Employment type

Co-Op (Fixed Term)

Contract type

Internship

Projected Minimum Salary per year

83,160.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year

152,460.00

Position type

Internship

Travel required

Some travel may be required based on business demand

Company

(0147) International Business Machines Corporation

Shift

General (daytime)

Is this role a commissionable/sales incentive based position?

No