R&D Manager - Software -914

Quantinuum Ltd.; Cambridge; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

28 days paid holiday

Workplace pension

Flexible working

Parental and adoption benefits

Job summary

Quantinuum is seeking an R&D Manager - Software to lead the team developing Quantinuum's programming-language and compiler tools, including Guppy, HUGR and TKET. This role blends technical leadership with people management as you define the technical roadmap and ensure production-ready, scalable software.

The position is hybrid, based in Cambridge with on-site days each week, involving collaboration across UK/US teams and travel to Quantinuum's US sites as needed.

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 related R&D.
• Demonstrated leadership of technical projects or teams, including shaping technical direction.
• Experience making and communicating architectural decisions for production software.
• Strong planning and communication skills, with ability to work across technical disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team of software engineers, setting clear expectations and fostering career development.
• Define and deliver the team's roadmap with leadership, tracking progress, managing priorities and risks.
• Provide technical leadership across the language, compiler and developer-tooling stack.
• Guide software through the full development lifecycle from research to production-ready releases.
• Partner with research, applications, product, hardware and other software teams across the UK and US, with occasional travel.
• Recruit, onboard and retain engineers and continuously improve engineering practices.

Skills

Leadership

Architecture decisions

Planning & communication

Distributed teams

Rust or Python

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in CS/Physics/EE

Postgraduate research may count

Tools

Rust

Python

Compiler development

Job description

We are seeking an R&D Manager - Software to lead the team developing Quantinuum's programming-language and compiler tools, including Guppy, HUGR and TKET. These tools form a core part of our quantum software stack, enabling developers and internal teams to translate high-level quantum programs into robust, executable systems.

This role combines technical leadership and people management in roughly equal parts. Working with software leadership and senior engineers, you will define and execute the technical roadmap, guide architectural decisions, and ensure that our language and compiler ecosystem is scalable, maintainable and ready for production use. You will remain technically engaged through design, code review, problem-solving and implementation.

Prior quantum-computing experience is valued but not required; demonstrated leadership and strong, relevant software-engineering experience are essential.

This is a hybrid position based in our Cambridge office, with an expectation of working on site some days each week.

Key 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.

YOU MUST HAVE:

• A 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. Relevant postgraduate research, including master's and PhD study, may count towards this total.
• 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.

WE VALUE:

• Experience developing quantum software, particularly quantum programming languages, compilers, intermediate representations, runtime systems or execution tooling.
• An understanding of quantum programming models, hardware-software co-design and the interaction between classical and quantum computation.
• Direct experience designing or implementing programming languages, type systems, compiler passes or intermediate representations.
• Experience developing production-quality software in Rust or Python.
• Previous experience as a line manager or team lead, including coaching, recruiting, onboarding and supporting engineers' career development.
• Experience leading or collaborating with geographically distributed technical teams.
• Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source software and working with developer communities.
• A track record of maturing research ideas and prototypes into software used by customers or other engineering teams.

What is in it for you?

Working alongside a highly talented team, with leading names in the quantum computing industry. We offer a highly competitive package, equity, 28 days of paid holiday (in addition to public holidays), a workplace pension, a positive approach to flexible working and enhanced parental and adoption benefits.

About Us:

Quantinuum is the world leader in quantum computing. The company’s quantum systems deliver the highest performance across all industry benchmarks. Quantinuum’s over 650 employees, including 400+ scientists and engineers, across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, are driving the quantum computing revolution.

By uniting best-in-class software with high-fidelity hardware, our integrated full-stack approach is accelerating the path to practical quantum computing and scaling its impact across multiple industries.

By joining Quantinuum, you’ll be at the forefront of this transformative revolution, shaping the future of quantum computing, pushing the limits of technology, and making the impossible possible.

Visit our news pages to learn more about Quantinuum and our scientific breakthroughs and achievements: https://www.quantinuum.com/news

Quantinuum Intro Video: The Future of Quantum Computing

Please note that employment with us is subject to successfully passing our pre-employment screening checks. We are an inclusive equal opportunity employer. You will be considered without regard to age, race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, nationality, sex, or veteran status.