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IonQ is the world's leading quantum computing platform and merchant supplier, delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. The company operates globally with headquarters in College Park, Maryland, and offices across North America, Europe, and Asia. IonQ's quantum computers, including the latest IonQ Tempo generation, are helping customers including Amazon Web Services and AstraZeneca achieve significant performance gains in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, and other domains. In 2025, IonQ achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.
This is a hands-on Staff Software Engineer role within the Non-Realtime Controllers team at Oxford Ionics (now part of IonQ). You will work at the intersection of software engineering and quantum hardware, building and operating the software that controls the supporting hardware ecosystem surrounding quantum computers. This is not a management role—you will be the most experienced engineer writing controllers, taking on the most demanding hardware integrations and framework work that benefits the entire team.
A functional quantum computer requires far more than the ion trap and real-time control electronics. It depends on a fleet of supporting hardware including cryogenic compressors, vacuum pumps, power supplies, lasers, temperature controllers, wavemeters, and cameras. Timing-critical operations run on dedicated real-time FPGA systems, while your team owns everything that does not require hard timing guarantees. These services run on general-purpose Linux hardware and must be rock-solid—a failed compressor or unnoticed pressure drift takes an entire machine offline.
Key responsibilities include: taking on the most demanding device integrations and diagnosing problems that only appear against real hardware in a live lab; removing whole classes of failure across the fleet rather than individual instances; improving the shared framework and bringing existing controllers along with each change; building tooling, simulators, and test infrastructure that accelerate the entire team; evolving how services are deployed and operated as the fleet grows; and raising the bar through code quality and thoughtful reviews.
You will work closely with skilled software engineers, systems teams operating the physical quantum computers, and world-leading quantum scientists. Previous exposure to quantum systems is not required.
REQUIREMENTS:
- Deep systems engineering experience with a track record of shipping and operating reliable services in production
- Expert-level systems engineering skills; controllers are written in Rust, so either solid Rust experience or deep proficiency in another systems language with appetite to work in Rust, including async programming
- Experience building and operating networked services in production such as gRPC or REST, with real grasp of error handling, observability, and failure modes
- Experience with hardware and instrument protocols and interfaces such as SCPI, Modbus, serial, and Ethernet
- Reputation as the person people bring undiagnosable bugs to; ability to prioritize work with clear understanding of critical versus urgent items
- Excellent communication skills both within software and across disciplines
- Judgment to tell a problem worth solving structurally from one worth patching
- Desire to stay hands-on in code at this level rather than move away from it
