Entry Level AI Software Engineer

IBM is hiring an Entry Level AI Software Engineer to build AI-powered software for IBM Z systems. The role focuses on integrating large language models with enterprise data and tools, evaluating and improving AI behavior, and developing reliable features in collaboration with experienced engineers.

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

What they're looking for:

• 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
• Bachelor's Degree
• 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