AI Engineer

SQC Silicon Quatum Computing; Sydney; On-site; AUD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

SQC Silicon Quatum Computing in Sydney is seeking an AI Engineer for Applied AI. You will embed with host teams every 3–4 months, map problems, own what you build and design with data, systems, and risk in mind.

You will work alongside physicists, fabrication staff and software peers, contributing to the Applied AI platform, and ensuring handover with comprehensive runbooks, tests and documentation for long-term host-team ownership.

Qualifications

• 4+ years building and running production software with post-release ownership.
• Experience with production agents or LLM-backed systems beyond prototypes.
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go, Rust or C++.
• Agent-first practice and ability to design reliable agents.
• Experience with inference budgets and cost-conscious development.
• High autonomy and ability to work embedded in another team.
• Ability to translate domain needs from non-software teams into software requirements.
• Proven ability to document, write runbooks and hand over to host teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and deliver agentic capabilities within host domains and constraints.
• Model the domain ontology, data, and state to match bench work.
• Identify quick wins and fundamental shifts; deliver through rotations.
• Build, optimize and evaluate production agents.
• Decide what the model handles vs. code handles.
• Design for backpressure, retries and idempotency across tools and devices.
• Clarify what an agent will do and when not to use one.
• Improve the Applied AI platform components and run the evaluation harness.
• Account for cost and impact in host terms; ensure smooth handover.
• Leave host teams more capable with training, habits and judgement.

Skills

Python

Go

Rust

C++

Agent-first practice

Data modeling

Systems design

Inferences budgets

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Kubernetes

Job description

1d ago , from SQC Silicon Quatum Computing

Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) is at the forefront of global efforts to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer, while delivering quantum-enhanced AI and simulation products to customers today.

Backed by over 25 years of technological excellence, SQC is a full-stack quantum computing company that leverages its proprietary manufacturing process to engineer atomic qubits in silicon with 0.13 nanometer precision. It is the most precise semiconductor manufacturing in the world, enabling systems with world-leading algorithmic fidelity, and a decisive advantage in the global quantum computing race.

Our products are commercially deployed and generating revenue. Watermelon, our quantum-enhanced AI system, is delivering superior results on real-world problems across energy, telecom and finance. Quantum Twins, our simulation platform, provides unparalleled ability to model quantum systems, accelerating molecule and materials discovery.

This is SQC: building the future of computing while delivering quantum impact today.

About the role

We are hiring an AI Engineer into Applied AI, the team that builds agentic capability across SQC's engineering, science, manufacturing and corporate teams, and runs the platform it is built on.

You will embed with a different host team every three to four months, across engineering, research, manufacturing and the corporate functions, and learn how each one actually works, digitally and physically, before you build anything for it. One rotation might be inspection tooling for lithography; the next, tracking devices through fabrication; the next, a corporate workflow nobody has automated. At the frontier of quantum computing, the problems arrive unsolved, often unstated, and with little precedent to copy.

You map the problem and the operating environment, then own what you build. Some of it will be messy. Getting it right takes judgement about data, system design and risk, not just prompting. Alongside the agents, you will teach as you go, so the capability outlasts the rotation. Applied AI sets the sequence of rotations and agrees with each host team what it commits before you arrive.

Based in Sydney, you will work hands-on with physicists, fabrication staff, engineers and corporate teams. This is a role for someone properly deep in applied AI: someone who thinks in loops and graphs, reaches for backpressure and ontologies before a bigger prompt, and already builds with agents as their default way of working.

Role responsibilities

• Work with the host team to define and deliver agentic capabilities, inside their domain and their constraints
• Model the domain before you automate it: the ontology, the data, and the state that has to match what is happening on the bench
• Find the quick wins and the fundamental shifts in how a team operates, prioritise between them, and deliver through the rotation
• Build, optimise and evaluate production agents
• Decide what the model does and what code does
• Design for backpressure, retries and idempotency; your agents sit in front of instruments, fab equipment and inference endpoints, and all of them have limits and bad days
• Say plainly what an agent will and will not do, including when a problem does not need one
• Build on the Applied AI platform (inference, MCP and web proxies, the evaluation harness, the agent registry and orchestration), improving it rather than working around it, and taking your share of running it
• Account for the impact and the cost of what you build, in terms the host team can defend after you have gone
• Hand over completely: code, runbook, evaluation and ownership to the host team, with no maintenance tail and no system that depends on one person remaining in the room
• Leave the host team more capable than you found them: the training, the habits and the judgement that outlast the agent

Your experience

Essential

• 4+ years building and running production software, with responsibility for it after release, and a record of shipping
• Building, optimising and evaluating production agents or LLM-backed systems, beyond prototypes and demos
• Strong Python, Go, Rust or C++
• Agent-first practice: coding agents are already your default way of working
• Tool use and context design, and the practical business of making an agent reliable rather than impressive (you can pick up our harness, MCP and proxy stack here)
• Accountability for an inference budget, even for a single agent: you have had to justify the spend and keep it inside a number
• High autonomy: you have worked embedded in someone else's team, without daily supervision, and been effective there
• Working directly with people who are not software engineers, and translating what they describe into what they need
• The judgement to say a problem does not need an agent, and to hold that position with a keen stakeholder
• Learning an unfamiliar domain quickly enough to be useful in it within weeks
• Handover as a habit: documentation, runbooks and tests good enough for someone else to own what you built
• Clear technical writing, and the ability to diagram a system so someone else can follow it

Nice to have

• Retrieval over messy internal data: documents, wikis, tickets, instrument output
• Evaluation practice: building the harness, offline and online scoring
• Data engineering: pipelines, storage and the modelling that has to match a real-world process
• Enough frontend to give a user something usable
• Scientific, laboratory or manufacturing environments, and users whose requirements arrive as a problem rather than a specification
• Consulting, internal platform or enablement work, where the deliverable was someone else's capability
• On-premise or air-gapped environments, including work with material that cannot leave the building
• Infrastructure as code and container orchestration (Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes)
• Quantum computing exposure of any kind (no physics degree required)

Equal opportunity

SQC is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse perspectives and experiences, and encourage applications from candidates who may not meet every listed requirement. If you’re excited about the role and believe you can contribute, we encourage you to apply.

Export controls

This position may require access to export-controlled information or technology. Employment may be subject to applicable export control laws and may require eligibility assessment based on factors such as nationality, citizenship, or residency, and, where necessary, obtaining relevant export licenses or approvals.

About SQC

SQC was founded by renowned physicist and materials scientist Michelle Simmons, who pioneered the field of atomic electronics, including the development of the world’s first single-atom transistor and the first integrated circuit built with atomic precision. Our Chair, Simon Segars, former CEO of Arm, is a leader in the semiconductor industry and was instrumental in developing the processors that powered the mobile computing revolution.

As a full-stack company with in-house QPU manufacturing, SQC can design, produce and test new quantum chips in under a week, enabling rapid iteration and a decisive advantage in the race to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer.

SQC is a high-accountability environment built on a simple principle: Every Atom Counts. If you’re looking to play a meaningful role in building the next frontier of computing, we’d love to hear from you.