Senior Research Software Engineer

IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ) is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting‑edge systems that have helped customers and partners including Amazon Web Services and AstraZeneca achieve 20× performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense.

In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two‑qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.

Location: This role is based at our Boston, MA office, with the option to work a few days a week remotely.
Travel: Up to 10% domestic
Job : 1605

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be part of a cross‑functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build the world’s best quantum computers to solve the world’s most complex problems. In this role, you will apply your deep technical expertise to build and maintain scalable, reliable, and researcher‑friendly software that empowers our scientists to accelerate their research and development efforts in quantum networking, computing, and sensing.

You will play a pivotal role in shaping our software architecture, driving SDLC best practices, improving system stability and observability, and mentoring a talented team to deliver innovative solutions that push the boundaries of quantum technology.

• Develop, maintain, and support the research and development (R&D) software used by our scientists, ensuring its stability, performance, and day‑to‑day reliability.
• Own the general software development lifecycle for our R&D codebases, including triaging and fixing bugs, addressing regressions, and improving long‑term code health.
• Improve observability across our R&D software stack (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting) so issues are caught early and root‑caused quickly.
• Contribute to the design, implementation, and management of our backend and frontend for R&D data acquisition.
• Design, build, and maintain the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to ensure quality and rapid, reliable deployments.
• Design and implement robust systems for the automated calibration and bring‑up of lab equipment.
• Review scientist‑contributed code, providing constructive feedback and guidance on code cleanliness, architecture, and best practices.
• Interface with other IonQ software teams to ensure alignment and integration across systems.
• Proactively identify opportunities to make R&D software more accessible, scalable, and self‑service for scientists.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent training, fellowship, or work experience.
• 5+ years professional experience in software engineering, including work on complex, cross‑functional systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python, and comfort working below it when needed: debugging across the stack, reasoning about concurrency and async, networking protocols, and performance profiling.
• Experience owning the full SDLC for production software, including debugging, incident response, and ongoing maintenance.
• Experience designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience writing clear, concise, and comprehensive user‑facing documentation, including tutorials, API reference guides, and internal knowledge base articles.

• 8+ years of professional software experience, ideally in a scientific or R&D environment, supporting research teams.
• Experience developing software for…