Quantum Software R&D Lead & Compiler Architect — Hybrid

Quantinuum; Cambridge; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work

Annual leave 28 days

Pension 4%

Life Insurance

Private medical

Dental Insurance

Income protection

Parental leave

Cycle to work

Eye care

Employee support

Job summary

Quantinuum is seeking an R&D Manager - Software in Cambridge to lead the team delivering programming-language and compiler tools such as Guppy, HUGR and TKET. The role combines technical leadership with people management and requires collaboration with UK and US teams to align interfaces and production-ready releases.

You will guide architectural decisions, drive the roadmap and maintain a scalable, maintainable software ecosystem while staying technically engaged through design and code

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering or a related field.
• Minimum five years of combined relevant experience in software engineering, compiler or programming-language development, or closely related technical R&D.
• Demonstrated leadership of technical projects or teams, including shaping technical direction, mentoring engineers and coordinating delivery.
• Experience making and communicating architectural decisions for production software, with attention to testing, documentation and long-term maintainability.
• Strong planning and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team of software engineers, setting clear expectations and supporting career development at every level.
• Define and deliver the team's roadmap jointly with software leadership and senior individual contributors, allocating capacity, tracking progress, and managing priorities, risks, dependencies and cross-team handoffs.
• Provide technical leadership across the language, compiler and developer-tooling stack.
• Guide software through the full development lifecycle, from research and prototyping to tested, documented and production-ready releases.
• Partner with research, applications, product, hardware and other software teams in the UK and US to align interfaces and ensure the software stack supports Quantinuum's quantum processors and priority use cases, with occasional travel to Quantinuum's US sites.
• Recruit, onboard and retain excellent engineers, and continuously improve the team's engineering and delivery practices.

Skills

Leadership

Project leadership

Architectural decisions

Planning

Communication

Distributed teams

Open source

Rust

Python

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering or related field

Tools

Rust

Python

Job description

Quantinuum is seeking an R&D Manager - Software in Cambridge to lead the team delivering programming-language and compiler tools such as Guppy, HUGR and TKET. The role combines technical leadership with people management and requires collaboration with UK and US teams to align interfaces and production-ready releases.

You will guide architectural decisions, drive the roadmap and maintain a scalable, maintainable software ecosystem while staying technically engaged through design and code