Program Manager

At IQM, we build world-leading quantum computers for the well-being of humankind. We design systems to tackle computational challenges beyond the practical limits of classical machines. Our work sits at the edge of science and engineering. It's complex, demanding, and deeply collaborative. We turn deep research into reliable, full-stack systems that drive discoveries in fields like medicine, energy, and technology, reshaping how the world computes.

Join the team that gives quantum a heartbeat.

IQM’s work is built on funded contracts, and each one comes with milestones, evidence reviews, claims and auditors. At the same time, our engineers are building toward IQM’s own product roadmap and serving customers. These three sets of commitments draw on the same people and the same hardware, and they don’t always point the same way.

As Program Manager, you hold the single view of all of it: what we’ve committed to, to whom, by when, and at what cost. You keep that picture consistent with our strategic, commercial and technology roadmaps, and you’re the person who sees a collision coming months before it lands.

You won’t have direct reports. You deliver through workstream leads, engineers and physicists in other functions, and you set day-to-day priorities within the capacity we’ve committed. Your influence comes from the quality of your plan and the credibility you build, not from a reporting line. You’ll work closely with legal, IP, commercial and finance, with our subcontractors and academic partners, and with the exec team.

• Run milestone delivery end to end. You own the contracted schedule, the success criteria and the baseline cost behind each milestone. Each quarter you assemble the technical and commercial evidence, present it for review, secure sign-off and trigger the claim. Payment depends on that evidence holding up, so it has to be right the first time.

• Keep the critical path honest. On a hardware-plus-software program, physical build, long-lead procurement and integration set the schedule. You track procurement and manage subcontractors and academic partners against defined deliverables and resource commitments. When an estimate looks optimistic, you challenge it.

• Make the risk register a working tool. Every risk has a named owner and a live mitigation. When commitments conflict, you bring the exec team options and a recommendation, not just the problem.

• Connect funded work to the product roadmap. You bring contract results, constraints and customer signals into IQM’s development planning. You flag early when funded scope and the company roadmap start to drift apart, and you track whether scientific, technical, industrial and commercial progress stay in balance at each milestone.

• Protect what we build and find what comes next. With legal, IP and commercial, you shape IP, freedom-to-operate and licensing strategy. You also drive the follow-on funding, continuation funding, customer contracts and investment that grow out of the program.

• 8+ years running complex technical programs where hardware and software come together, including at least one of £5m or more with reporting obligations to an external funder or customer. You know milestone-based contracts from the inside: defining milestones, building acceptance evidence, controlling cost and schedule, and managing subcontractors and academic partners where IP is sensitive.

• Familiarity with the UK funding system and what assessors and auditors expect to see.

• Enough technical depth to read a quantum computing system architecture and challenge an estimate. A physical sciences or engineering degree, or equivalent working depth.

• Equal credibility with physicists and with funders, auditors and…