Optical Inspection Engineer for Quantum Chips

Physics World Jobs; College Park (MD); On-site; USD 124,000 - 186,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

401(k) matching

Unlimited PTO

Paid holidays

Parental leave

Adoption leave

Legal insurance

Home technology stipend

Job summary

IonQ, Inc. in College Park, Maryland, seeks to own end-to-end automated optical inspection for its next-generation trapped ion quantum devices, turning manual processes into scalable, repeatable systems.

This high-ownership role sits in the QPU Production team in College Park. The candidate will have 3+ years in automated inspection, machine vision or optical metrology, strong Python for instrument control and data automation, and experience organizing technical data and automated reporting.

Qualifications

• We are looking for someone who has owned, programmed or deployed automated inspection, machine vision or optical metrology equipment in a laboratory or a manufacturing setting, and who is comfortable writing the code that sits around it.
• You will not be reviewing images one at a time, because the point of the role is to make that unnecessary.
• A degree in engineering, physics, optics, materials science or a related technical field is a good route in, as is equivalent hands on experience.
• Disposition matters as much as the background.
• This capability is being built rather than maintained, so we need someone who will ask the science team why a specification is written the way it is, and who is content to work through a problem nobody has fully defined yet.
• If you have strong inspection and automation experience and the curiosity to pick up the data and reporting side, we would rather hear from you than not.

Responsibilities

• Own the automated optical inspection platform, from installation and programming through to qualification, calibration and uptime.
• Develop inspection recipes that reliably detect and classify micron scale defects.
• Build automated capture, storage and reporting of trap chip and QPU test data.
• Produce certificates of conformance that are repeatable and auditable.
• Work with equipment vendors on selection, acceptance and troubleshooting.

Skills

3+ years automated inspection

Python for instrument control

machine vision

data automation

cleanroom/lab hands-on

Education

Degree in engineering/physics/optics/MEMS

Tools

Python

Job description

IonQ, Inc. in College Park, Maryland, seeks to own end-to-end automated optical inspection for its next-generation trapped ion quantum devices, turning manual processes into scalable, repeatable systems.

This high-ownership role sits in the QPU Production team in College Park. The candidate will have 3+ years in automated inspection, machine vision or optical metrology, strong Python for instrument control and data automation, and experience organizing technical data and automated reporting.