Senior Software Engineer, Runtime

Oxford Ionics; Oxford; Presencial; GBP 90.000 - 125.000; Jornada completa

Descripción de la vacante

Oxford Ionics, now part of IonQ, is pioneering the next generation of quantum computing. We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to join our Runtime Software team in the UK, working with experimental scientists to implement real-time control system behaviours and abstractions for experiments.

You will help shape the core Rust libraries and the execution environment that moves our system from hardware to a quantum computer, enabling high-precision, scalable computation.

Formación

• Experience in systems programming or real-time software development.
• Interest in Rust and modern language ecosystems.
• Strong collaboration and communication across disciplines.

Responsabilidades

• Develop abstractions over real-time control hardware to drive ions with nanosecond precision.
• Contribute to the core execution model and Rust libraries for our quantum runtime.
• Collaborate with scientists, orchestration, and compiler teams to integrate software with hardware.
• Produce tooling to enable rapid iteration and safe experimentation.
• Improve APIs used by internal users.

Descripción del empleo

Oxford Ionics, now part of IonQ, is pioneering the next generation of quantum computing. Using our world-leading trapped-ion technology, we’re building the most powerful, accurate and reliable quantum systems to tackle problems that today’s supercomputers cannot solve. Joining Oxford Ionics means becoming part of a global IonQ team that is transforming the future of quantum technology - faster, at scale, and with real world impact.

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum company delivering solutions to solve the world’s most complex problems. IonQ’s newest generation quantum computers, IonQ Tempo and IonQ Forte Enterprise, are the latest in cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners such as Amazon Web Services, AstraZeneca, and NVIDIA achieve 20x performance results. The company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance in 2025.

The company is accelerating its technology roadmap and intends to deliver the world’s most powerful quantum computers with 2 million qubits by 2030 to accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. IonQ’s advancements in quantum networking position the company as a leader in building the quantum internet.

The Role:

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Runtime Software team at IonQ. In this role, you will be responsible for working directly with the experimental scientists to implement the real-time control system behaviours and provide abstractions they require for their experiments, contributing to the team’s mission of enabling our science teams to experiment and improve the primitive operations which allow compute, and building towards fault tolerant computation.

You’ll play an important part in shaping the core, Rust, libraries and the execution environment which take our system from a collection of hardware to a quantum computer, and support our work in building the world’s most advanced quantum systems.

Responsibilities:

In this position, you will work on developing abstractions over real-time control hardware, supporting the effective delivery of a control system capable of repeatedly and reproducibly driving our ions with nano-second level precision, with abstractions which are conducive to both fast iteration and system scaling.

You’ll have the opportunity to accelerate the science core to the development of our systems, and contribute to the core execution model of our quantum computers, contributing directly to the success of building utility-scale quantum computers.

Key responsibilities include:

• Collaborating with scientists to understand their requirements.
• Interfacing with system orchestration, non-realtime control and compiler teams to ensure our work integrates seamlessly with the wider software architecture.
• Implementing drivers for various real-time devices.
• Producing tooling to enable users of our code to iterate rapidly and fearlessly.
• Developing the execution environment for the user programs which run on our systems.
• Continually improving the APIs used by our internal users.

Requirements:

To be successful, you will need expert programming skills in a systems programming language and a desire to produce high quality code appropriate to a real-time environment. We’re looking for someone who can quickly iterate on low-level code in a collaborative, cross-disciplinary, environment and contribute effectively within a fast moving, highly technical team.

You’d be a great fit if you:

• Have strong programming skills in one or more mainstream programming languages
• Have experience with a systems programming programming
• Have an interest in or experience with Rust
• Have developed excellent communication skills both within the context of software and across disciplines
• Are comfortable working with rapidly evolving requirements
• Are used to maintaining and producing high quality code reviews and appropriate testing
• Have a desire to maximize impact through quick iteration and short cycles of learning and improvement
• Are eager to learn and develop your skills