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Introduction

At IBM work is more than a job - it’s a calling: To build. To design. To code. To consult. To think along with clients and sell. To make markets. To invent. To collaborate. Not just to do something better, but to attempt things you’ve never thought possible. Are you ready to lead in this new era of technology and solve some of the world’s most challenging problems? If so, let’s talk.

Your role and responsibilities
We are looking for a highly motivated PhD or MSc student to join our team for a summer internship focused on cost-efficient serving of large-scale AI inference workloads.
The internship will explore advanced routing strategies and KV-cache–aware optimizations in distributed inference systems, with an emphasis on improving performance, scalability, and GPU cost efficiency.
What you will work on
  • Designing and evaluating routing algorithms to optimize inference latency, throughput, and cost
  • Investigating KV cache management strategies for large-scale, distributed inference serving
  • Prototyping, benchmarking, and analyzing inference optimization techniques
  • Working with modern inference frameworks and real production-like workloads

Why join us?
This internship offers a unique opportunity to work at the intersection of AI systems and distributed infrastructure, with real-world impact on scalable, cost-efficient inference serving used in production environments.


Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • MSc or PhD student in Computer Science, Machine Learning Systems, or a related field
  • Strong background or interest in distributed systems, systems research, or ML infrastructure
  • Strong programming skills (Python, Go, or similar)
  • Hands-on experience or familiarity with vLLM (architecture, KV cache behavior, scheduling, or extensions)
  • Interest in AI infrastructure, performance optimization, and cost efficiency
  • Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively within a research and engineering team


Please include your grade sheet with your application.

Preferred technical and professional experience
  • Experience with Kubernetes (K8s) and cloud-native systems
  • Familiarity with inference serving stacks, networking, or GPU-based systems
  • Experience with benchmarking, profiling, or performance analysis

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

For additional information about location requirements, please discuss with the recruiter following submission of your application.