Senior Engineer, Building Automation and Control Systems

About Xanadu
Xanadu’s mission is to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere.

At Xanadu, we are learners, innovators, researchers, collaborators and problem solvers. We are creating something that has never been built before. What we are doing is extremely hard, the classic moon shot. Few people in their life will be able to be a part of something like this, where if we are successful, the technologies we develop will solve some of the world’s most challenging problems and literally change the world.

And that is something to be excited about!

Your role and responsibilities
Xanadu is building fault‑tolerant photonic quantum computers. Our machines work only when hundreds of optical, electronic and digital subsystems behave as one coherent, controllable system. This includes lasers and phase locks, squeezed‑light sources, photon‑counting and homodyne detectors, programmable photonic circuits, and the electronics, ASIC, FPGA, and software layers that drive them. We are looking for a Staff Control Systems Architect to own that coherence.

Own the architecture of the central control system for the next generations of our fault tolerant quantum computers: real‑time feedback and locking, feed forward and switching, initialization and calibration, timing and data flow.

Define and document the interfaces and requirements between digital control, FPGA firmware, analog/mixed‑signal electronics and ASICs, embedded software and the optical hardware, and keep them consistent as the design evolves.

Make system‑wide tradeoffs and get them adopted: decide what is easy, what is hard, and what will hurt later, backed by quantified budgets on noise, latency, bandwidth and engineering effort.

Leverage our collaboration with external partners and our participation in major programs to accelerate control system progress.

Identify hidden dependencies and technical risks where different systems interact, before such issues become expensive.

Review and guide the work of the FPGA, electronics and embedded teams against the architecture, and mentor engineers across those teams.

Required qualifications and experience

Deep hands‑on experience in control of complex physical systems: feedback and locking, error‑signal generation, loop shaping, real‑time digital control, noise measurement and budgeting, and the electronics behind them.

A track record of architecting a system that several teams built against, including writing interfaces and requirements documents, and multiple rounds of improvements through system‑wide tradeoffs.

Excellent written and verbal communication and being comfortable coordinating across teams and partners with competing constraints.

PhD or equivalent experience in physics, electrical engineering or a related field, typically with 8+ years of subsequent experience in quantum or photonic hardware, precision instrumentation, gravitational‑wave or accelerator controls, semiconductor equipment, aerospace/defense controls, or comparable large‑scale systems.

Preferred qualifications and experience

Continuous‑variable optics: fibre and free‑space interferometry, homodyne detection, laser phase and frequency locking, piezo and electro‑optic actuators.

FPGA development for real‑time control or DSP, including high‑speed ADC/DAC data paths.

Familiarity with analog or digital ASIC design flows.

Instrument‑control and lab‑automation software (Python; frameworks such as ARTIQ, EPICS or QCoDeS).

Experience taking a research control system to a production‑quality, multi‑unit deployment.

Experience in leveraging artificial intelligence for system architecture and software or hardware design tasks.

Empathy for how scientists, engineers, system operators, and users interact with Xanadu’s photonic…