Introduction

The Apps@Research team builds the tools that IBM Researchers need to accelerate their work. Whether it's compute, agents, models, data or support; we work closely with our research teams to build what they need. We are an AI-native team and looking for a design engineer intern who can collaborate with product managers, engineers, and stakeholders to deliver new experiences from sketch to software.

Your role and responsibilities

• Design and ship UI work for production applications, from first sketch to merged code.
• Extend our component library and the Storybook that documents it, so patterns stay reusable and other people can find them.
• Prototype in code. Put something clickable in front of researchers in days, not weeks, and let what you learn change the design.
• Work alongside AI coding agents as a normal part of the job, and improve how the team runs them.
• Carry IBM Research's voice into the interface - its tone, restraint, and vocabulary - while bringing your own aesthetic judgment to the work.

Required education

High School Diploma/GED

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• A portfolio of design work. Show craft: typography, layout, color, motion, interaction states. Include at least one thing you designed and built and put in front of real users. Live links beat static files.
• Working knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and component frameworks. You can take a design from Figma to a working component without waiting for someone else.
• Exposure to design systems in practice. Component variants, design tokens, and writing a component's documentation so a stranger uses it correctly. Building or running a Storybook counts; so does any comparable component workbench.
• Hands-on use of AI coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or v0 past one-off prompting and into repeatable setups. Two specific practices we care about: loop engineering (designing a process that keeps an agent working toward a stated goal and checks its own output, rather than typing every prompt yourself) and agent swarms (splitting a job across several agents running in parallel, each with a narrow scope). These practices are new and still changing. A few honest attempts and an opinion about what broke will carry you further here than a polished method.
• Enough back-end familiarity to feed a front end - Python, Go, or Node.js. You can read an API response and shape the data an interface needs.

Preferred technical and professional experience

• A point of view about software, and the language to explain why an interface works or fails.
• Evidence you can write in someone else's voice: brand, editorial, or client work where the tone was not your own.
• Accessibility fundamentals: keyboard navigation, contrast, semantic markup, basic screen reader testing.
• Git, pull requests, and code review.
• Cloud development exposure: containers, Kubernetes or OpenShift.
• Agile development practices.
• Interface writing: empty states, error messages, release notes.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM Research is the organic growth engine of IBM and an innovation engine for our customers and partners. As part of this mission, IBM Research anticipates and examines 'What's Next in Computing' to ultimately create and integrate the technologies the world relies upon to solve big challenges and unlock new opportunities. We create and pioneer new markets for IBM, our partners and customers as exemplified in our ongoing quest to reach practical and large-scale quantum computing. Across IBM Research, we realize the power and potential to accelerate discovery with our partners and clients by combining the power of high performance computing, AI, and Quantum, all integrated through the hybrid cloud.

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

Design Engineer Intern 2027 - Design and Build AI-Native Interfaces

Date posted

22-Sep-2026

Job ID

133801

City / Township / Village

Yorktown Heights

State / Province

New York

Country

United States

Work arrangement

Onsite

Area of work

Software Engineering

Employment type

Co-Op (Fixed Term)

Contract type

Internship

Projected Minimum Salary per year

90,720.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year

166,320.00

Position type

Internship

Travel required

No Travel

Company

(0147) International Business Machines Corporation

Shift

General (daytime)

Is this role a commissionable/sales incentive based position?

No