AI & Data Engineer

IBM

IBM

Software Engineering, Data Science

California, USA · Texas City, TX, USA

Posted on May 1, 2026
Introduction

At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help solve complex business challenges and drive meaningful outcomes. Working across industries and geographies, you will partner with colleagues, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), Business Partners, and service providers to develop solutions that enable digital transformation and lasting impact.

A Build Engineering AI & Data Engineer is more than a developer — you are a hands-on builder responsible for turning data and AI concepts into real, working solutions that deliver measurable business value. Success in this role requires curiosity, strong technical depth, and the ability to collaborate effectively across ecosystem partners to translate ideas into scalable outcomes.

Working alongside Solution Architects, ISVs, Business Partners, and service providers, you will leverage the watsonx platform and modern data and AI technologies, as well as automation, observability, and FinOps platforms, to prototype, implement, and scale solutions. This role sits at the intersection of data engineering, AI development, ecosystem collaboration, and partner engagement, with a strong focus on execution across both pre-sales activities and post-sales implementation, supporting Build Engineering initiatives across the Americas GEO.

A key part of this role is supporting IBM’s Build motion, where we co-create with ISVs, Business Partners, and service providers to validate, embed, and scale IBM technology across AI, Data, and Automation within the solutions they bring to market for their end customers. This work drives repeatability, accelerates adoption, and strengthens joint go-to-market outcomes.

Your role and responsibilities

AI & Data Solution Development & Prototyping

  • Build demos, Proof of Concepts (POCs), and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) to validate use cases and demonstrate business value.
  • Develop data and AI-driven applications using foundation models, large language models (LLMs), and related technologies, including NLP, text-based solutions, and tooling such as Project Bob or similar technologies that accelerate pipeline creation, code generation, and deployment.
  • Rapidly iterate on prototypes based on partner and stakeholder feedback.

Implementation & Integration

  • Translate solution designs into production-ready code and deployable architectures.
  • Integrate AI and data capabilities into enterprise systems, APIs, business workflows, and partner platforms.
  • Work across structured and unstructured data sources, ensuring data is prepared and optimized for AI and analytics use cases.

Automation & Observability Integration

  • Integrate AI and data capabilities with enterprise automation, observability, and FinOps platforms to enable end-to-end workflows and outcomes.
  • Work with event streaming, infrastructure automation, secrets management, and cost/operations tooling to operationalize AI-driven use cases.
  • Build integrations across APIs and event-driven architectures to connect AI solutions with enterprise systems and partner platforms.
  • Support use cases such as incident detection, workflow automation, cost optimization, and performance monitoring.

Build Motion, Pre-Sales & Post-Sales Delivery

  • Support both pre-sales activities and post-sales implementations as part of IBM’s Build motion.
  • In pre-sales, co-create with ISVs and Business Partners, alongside Solution Architects, to validate IBM technology through discovery, demos, prototypes, POCs, and MVPs.
  • In post-sales, co-create with partners to implement, integrate, optimize, and scale solutions in production environments to drive adoption and measurable outcomes.
  • Help embed IBM technology into partner platforms and offerings that are sold to their end customers.
  • Contribute reusable engineering patterns, accelerators, and assets that improve repeatability and scalability of joint solutions.

Data Engineering & Pipeline Development

  • Design, build, and optimize data pipelines to support AI models and analytics use cases.
  • Work with structured and unstructured data across batch and streaming architectures.
  • Implement data ingestion, transformation, and feature engineering processes.
  • Support modern data architectures including lakehouse, vector databases, and event streaming frameworks (e.g., Kafka/Confluent).
  • Enable data readiness for AI, including integration with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and orchestration pipelines.

Model Utilization & Optimization

  • Implement and optimize foundation models and LLMs for performance, scalability, and cost efficiency.
  • Apply prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation techniques.
  • Monitor outputs and continuously improve accuracy and reliability.

Delivery Execution & Collaboration

  • Partner with Solution Architects, Data Scientists, and ecosystem stakeholders to deliver high-quality outcomes.
  • Operate within agile delivery models, contributing to sprint execution and milestones.
  • Communicate progress, risks, and technical trade-offs clearly to stakeholders.

Testing, Deployment & Support

  • Support deployment across cloud, hybrid, and on-prem environments.
  • Conduct testing, validation, and debugging to ensure production readiness.
  • Provide technical support during deployment and early lifecycle adoption.

Documentation & Reusability

  • Document solution components, code, and implementation patterns.
  • Contribute to reusable assets, accelerators, and best practices.
  • Support knowledge sharing and onboarding across the team.
Required education
Bachelor's Degree
Preferred education
Master's Degree
Required technical and professional expertise
  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, or a related field.
  • Strong proficiency in Python; additional languages are a plus.
  • Experience with AI/ML frameworks such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, or Hugging Face.
  • Hands-on experience with data manipulation using Pandas, NumPy, and Scikit-learn.
  • Experience designing and working with data pipelines, data processing frameworks, and distributed data systems.
  • Exposure to foundation models, large language models, NLP, or similar AI technologies.
  • Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift).
  • Experience building APIs and integrating across systems.
  • Experience supporting technical delivery across pre-sales and/or post-sales environments.
  • Strong problem-solving, debugging, and optimization skills.
  • Ability to collaborate across technical and partner teams.
  • Demonstrated growth mindset and commitment to continuous learning.
Preferred technical and professional experience
  • Experience with IBM technologies such as watsonx.ai, watsonx.data, watsonx Orchestrate, and Project Bob, or similar AI, data, and automation technologies used to accelerate solution development and deployment.
  • Experience with enterprise platforms such as Confluent (Kafka), HashiCorp (Terraform, Vault), Apptio/Cloudability (FinOps), Instana (observability), Turbonomic (optimization), or similar technologies supporting event-driven architectures, automation, monitoring, and cost optimization.
  • Familiarity with RAG architectures, vector databases, and embeddings.
  • Experience with Spark, Kafka, or distributed data processing frameworks.
  • Exposure to DevOps/MLOps practices (CI/CD, model lifecycle management).
  • Experience working with ISVs, Business Partners, or ecosystem-led solutions.
  • Experience supporting both pre-sales validation and post-sales implementation.
  • Understanding of enterprise workflows, automation, and embedded solution patterns.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT

IBM has a global presence, operating in more than 175 countries with a broad-based geographic distribution of revenue. The company’s Global Markets organization is a strategic sales business unit that manages IBM’s global footprint, working closely with dedicated country-based operating units to serve clients locally. These country teams have client relationship managers who lead integrated teams of consultants, solution specialists and delivery professionals to enable clients’ growth and innovation. By complementing local expertise with global experience and digital capabilities, IBM builds deep and broad-based client relationships. This local management focus fosters speed in supporting clients, addressing new markets and making investments in emerging opportunities. Additionally, the Global Markets organization serves clients with expertise in their industry as well as through the products and services that IBM and partners supply. IBM is also expanding its reach to new and existing clients through digital marketplaces.

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

IBM offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits program. Eligible employees may have access to:

- Healthcare benefits including medical & prescription drug coverage, dental, vision, and mental health & well being

- Financial programs such as 401(k), cash balance pension plan, the IBM Employee Stock Purchase Plan, financial counseling, life insurance, short & long- term disability coverage, and opportunities for performance based salary incentive programs

- Generous paid time off including 12 holidays, minimum 56 hours sick time, 120 hours vacation, 12 weeks parental bonding leave in accordance with IBM Policy, and other Paid Care Leave programs. IBM also offers paid family leave benefits to eligible employees where required by applicable law

- Training and educational resources on our personalized, AI-driven learning platform where IBMers can grow skills and obtain industry-recognized certifications to achieve their career goals

- Diverse and inclusive employee resource groups, giving & volunteer opportunities, and discounts on retail products, services & experiences

We consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable law.

This position was posted on the date cited in the key job details section and is anticipated to remain posted for 21 days from this date or less if not needed to fill the role.

US Citizenship Required.

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.


This position is eligible for participation in an IBM Sales Incentive plan. Actual incentive opportunity will be based on performance and the eligible Target Incentive, as addressed in the applicable plan, all of which is subject to change. The compensation range listed for this position is the IBM Reference Salary that is used when you are not actively participating in a sales plan. Your actual base pay plus incentive opportunity will be determined by the Incentive Plan assigned to you.

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