Advisory Research Software Engineer

Introduction Your role and responsibilities

• Design and implement AI systems that address complex SQL and data transformation tasks requiring multi-step reasoning beyond single-pass generation approaches.
• Lead the technical development of the Query Planning Gym (Query Gym) framework to support structured reasoning and evaluation on enterprise-scale workloads.
• Architect agent-based workflows within Query Gym to support planning, validation, critique, and repair as coordinated system components.
• Integrate execution‑aware tools into agent workflows to improve correctness, reduce retries, and optimize system efficiency.
• Translate research concepts in reasoning and planning into product‑compatible architectures, develop production‑grade code, testing systems, benchmarking performance, and analyzing results.
• Integrate and analyze benchmarks such as ELTBench against Query Gym for evaluating complex, real world SQL transformation workloads.
• Develop algorithms and agentic systems that improve LLM reliability.
• Collaborate with product teams to analyze production data transformation pipelines and identify schema drift and execution issues.
• Develop remediation approaches that translate plan level failures into actionable configuration or transformation guidance for users, including validation using benchmarks.
• Work on design and implementation of autonomous agents for App World.
• Prepare technical documentation, design specifications, and implementation guidance for downstream teams to operationalize developed systems.
• Prepare research publications and end‑to‑end demonstrations to communicate system capabilities to internal and external audiences.
• Design and implement a synthetic dataset and benchmark generation pipeline for long, complex SQL queries.
• Utilize Python, Transformer Architecture, Data & AI LLMs (Fine‑Tuning, Inference, Evaluation), Container Orchestration Platforms (Kubernetes, Docker, Open Shift), Data & AI Microservice deployment, Agentic AI frameworks, Natural Language Processing (NLP).

Required:

Master’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science or related (employer will accept a Bachelor's degree plus five (5) years of progressive experience in lieu of a Master’s degree) and one (1) year of experience as a Research Software Engineer or related. One (1) year of experience must include utilizing Python, Transformer Architecture, Data & AI LLMs (Fine‑Tuning, Inference, Evaluation), Container Orchestration Platforms (Kubernetes, Docker, Open Shift), Data & AI Microservice deployment, Agentic AI frameworks, Natural Language Processing (NLP).

$203010 to $239300 per year. Full time. AV217.

IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and 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, caste, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, veteran status, or other characteristics. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.