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Introduction

At IBM Research, we push the boundaries of what’s possible in computing: advancing AI, hybrid cloud, high performance computing, and quantum computing. Our teams explore the fundamental challenges that will define the next era of computational science.

As part of IBM Quantum you will join a multidisciplinary group working at the intersection of state of the art HPC systems and emerging quantum processors. Our culture values curiosity, creativity, and scientific rigor, offering unique opportunities to develop the software that will support the future of compute while growing professionally within a team that defines cutting-edge technology.

Quantum computers have now demonstrated utility in simulating quantum systems beyond brute-force classical approaches. The community has begun developing algorithms and workflows that leverage both quantum computers and classical HPC systems to scale applications — especially in chemistry and materials science — beyond what either system can simulate alone. At the same time, today's quantum systems face a significant challenge in qubit error rates, which requires techniques such as quantum error mitigation and quantum error correction to manage noise. These techniques are themselves computationally demanding, and are therefore well suited to HPC systems.

Both hybrid applications and error mitigation/correction are new research areas, with scientists actively developing and contributing new ideas and algorithms. You will join a team with a long history of experience in HPC and distributed code optimization, working with quantum domain experts to help them distribute and accelerate research code and demonstrate at-scale performance of new algorithms developed within IBM and with our research partners.

Your role and responsibilities

We are looking for interns interested in accelerating and scaling hybrid HPC–quantum applications, focusing on the HPC side: starting from sequential proof-of-concept code, parallelizing and distributing it, and accelerating it with GPUs where possible. You will work side by side with quantum research scientists and HPC experts, who will guide you throughout the project. More specifically, you will:

• Analyze sequential code to identify opportunities for parallelization using shared-memory and distributed-memory techniques

• Identify portions of the resulting code that can be offloaded to GPUs for improved performance

• Run the code at scale (up to hundreds of GPUs) and evaluate performance and scalability

• Work alongside quantum scientists to understand the impact of your work on their research: will this allow larger problems to be solved, and make the new algorithm competitive against state-of-the-art classical algorithms?

Required education

Bachelor's Degree

Preferred education

Master's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Proficiency in Python and experience with modern software engineering practices

• Proficiency in at least one systems programming language (e.g., C, C++, Rust)

• Some level of hands-on experience with HPC software (e.g., OpenMP, MPI, CUDA)

• Ability to communicate technical results clearly to both HPC engineers and domain scientists, and to work independently in a research setting

Preferred technical and professional experience

• Experience developing and running parallel or distributed applications on a multi-node HPC cluster, including job schedulers such as Slurm or LSF

• Hands-on GPU programming experience with CUDA, HIP, or a portability layer such as OpenMP target offload, Kokkos, or OpenACC

• Familiarity with performance analysis and profiling tools (e.g., Nsight Systems/Compute, VTune, TAU, HPCToolkit) and with reasoning about roofline, strong/weak scaling, and communication bottlenecks

• Experience with GPU-accelerated numerical libraries (e.g., cuBLAS/cuSOLVER, cuTENSOR, MAGMA, NCCL) or scientific Python stacks such as NumPy/SciPy, CuPy, JAX, PyTorch, mpi4py, Dask, or Numba

• Background in numerical linear algebra, tensor networks, or Monte Carlo methods, and experience with computational chemistry, materials science, or condensed matter physics codes

• Exposure to quantum computing concepts and frameworks such as Qiskit — including quantum error mitigation or quantum error correction — or a demonstrated interest in learning them

• Experience bridging Python and compiled code (e.g., pybind11, nanobind, Cython, CFFI) to accelerate research prototypes

• Comfort with collaborative development practices: Git, code review, testing, CI/CD

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

Research Intern 2027 – GPU Acceleration for Quantum Computing Applications

Date posted

19-Oct-2026

Job ID

133664

City / Township / Village

Yorktown Heights

State / Province

New York

Country

United States

Work arrangement

Onsite

Area of work

Research

Employment type

Co-Op (Fixed Term)

Contract type

Internship

Projected Minimum Salary per year

68,400.00

Projected Maximum Salary per year

125,400.00

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