Staff Software Engineer - Operating System

We are looking for senior software engineers to help build our next-generation quantum operating system. Never worked on a quantum operating system? It’s much like an operating system for a robot, managing feedback loops at various time scales between sensors and actuators to create a precisely tuned environment where we can perform high fidelity quantum computations. In this role, you’ll help build the operating system which allows us to build the world’s best quantum computers.

Responsibilities:

• Lead, design, architect, develop, test, deploy, maintain and improve major software components, systems, and features; being a small team, we count on each other to run with projects independently
• Ensure the quality of our system through design and code reviews 
• Assist in the career development of others, providing mentorship on advanced technical issues
• Collaborate with an experienced interdisciplinary staff
• Approach problems pragmatically
• Help us continuously improve how we do things

The ideal candidate will have experience leading or contributing to multiple simultaneous product development efforts, projects, and initiatives. You’ll be able to balance technical expertise and savvy with strong business judgment to make great technology choices. You’ll strive for simplicity and demonstrate significant creativity and incisive judgment.

You’d be a good fit with:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience -- untraditional backgrounds are welcome here
• 7+ years experience in software development in one or more general-purpose programming languages (like Go, Rust, or C++)
• Excellent engineering skills in a few key areas:
• Multithreaded programming and execution
• Distributed systems experience
• Real-time/embedded systems experience
• Interfacing with hardware via Ethernet, USB, serial, etc.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• A love of collaborating in an interdisciplinary environment
• Empathy and customer focus: you'll work closely with our internal team of physicists who depend on our software every day 

You’d be a great fit with:

• Master’s degree or PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or related technical field
• Deep expertise in Go and/or Rust
• A background in robotics
• Experience with programmatic device control (SCPI, MODBUS, etc. over serial, USB, TCP)
• Prior work with relational, document and time-series DBs
• Experience with embedded OS and/or control plane development — programming embedded applications with a heavy data flow dependency
• Experience developing hardware abstraction libraries
• Machine learning experience
• Familiarity with digital signal processing

Location:

IonQ’s operating system team is based in our bright, airy headquarters in College Park, Maryland, due to our highly collaborative and interactive work with the hardware teams building the world’s best quantum computers.