Senior Research Software Engineer

Physics World; Boston (MA); Hybrid; USD 146,000 - 191,000; Full time

Job summary

IonQ is seeking a Senior Software Engineer in Boston to join a cross-functional team building scalable, researcher-friendly software for quantum computing research. You will influence software architecture, drive SDLC best practices, and mentor engineers across the stack.

You will collaborate with scientists and other software teams to improve observability, reliability, and performance, while shaping the codebase and deployment pipelines to accelerate discovery and innovation in quantum systems.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong Python skills and debugging across the stack, concurrency, and performance profiling.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and support the R&D software used by scientists, ensuring stability and performance.
• Own the full SDLC for production software, including debugging and maintenance.
• Improve observability across the R&D software stack (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting).
• Design, build, and maintain backend/frontend for R&D data acquisition.
• Create and manage CI/CD pipelines for rapid, reliable deployments.
• Design and implement automated calibration and bring-up of lab equipment.
• Review code contributions and mentor engineers.

Skills

Python

SDLC

CI/CD

Debugging

Performance profiling

Education

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

Job description

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc . [NYSE: IONQ] is the world's leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ's newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance .

Job Details

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc . [NYSE: IONQ] is the world's leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ's newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance .

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.

Location: This role is based at our Boston, MA office, with the option to work a few days a week in-office.

Travel: Up to 10% domestic

Job ID: 1605

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll be part of a cross-functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build the world's best quantum computers to solve the world's most complex problems. In this role, you will apply your deep technical expertise to build and maintain scalable, reliable, and researcher-friendly software that empowers our scientists to accelerate their research and development efforts in quantum networking, computing, and sensing. You will play a pivotal role in shaping our software architecture, driving SDLC best practices, improving system stability and observability, and mentoring a talented team to deliver innovative solutions that push the boundaries of quantum technology.

Responsibilities

• Develop, maintain, and support the research and development (R&D) software used by our scientists, ensuring its stability, performance, and day-to-day reliability.
• Own the general software development lifecycle for our R&D codebases, including triaging and fixing bugs, addressing regressions, and improving long-term code health.
• Improve observability across our R&D software stack (logging, metrics, tracing, alerting) so issues are caught early and root-caused quickly.
• Contribute to the design, implementation, and management of our backend and frontend for R&D data acquisition.
• Design, build, and maintain the continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines to ensure quality and rapid, reliable deployments.
• Design and implement robust systems for the automated calibration and bring-up of lab equipment.
• Review scientist-contributed code, providing constructive feedback and guidance on code cleanliness, architecture, and best practices.
• Interface with other IonQ software teams to ensure alignment and integration across systems.
• Proactively identify opportunities to make R&D software more accessible, scalable, and self-service for scientists.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent training, fellowship, or work experience.
• 5+ years professional experience in software engineering, including work on complex, cross-functional systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python, and comfort working below it when needed: debugging across the stack, reasoning about concurrency and async, networking protocols, and performance profiling.
• Experience owning the full SDLC for production software, including debugging, incident response, and ongoing maintenance.
• Experience designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience writing clear, concise, and comprehensive user-facing documentation, including tutorials, API reference guides, and internal knowledge base articles.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software experience, ideally in a scientific or R&D environment, supporting research teams.
• Experience developing software for hardware control, automation, or data acquisition.
• Demonstrated experience mentoring and providing technical leadership to other engineers.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and modern DevOps practices.
• Experience with database design and management.

What Success Looks Like

• In your first few months, you'll have onboarded across our R&D codebases, started shipping fixes and reviewing scientist contributions, and identified the biggest stability and observability gaps to tackle.
• You act as a trusted partner to the scientists on the team: helping them write and structure code, supporting their tooling and documentation needs, running code reviews focused on software quality (organization, readability, maintainability), and flagging cases where deeper science-related review might be needed. No physics or quantum background required, but genuine interest in supporting research work is essential.
• By the end of your first six months, you'll own the SDLC health of at least one major codebase, with measurably improved observability and faster diagnosis of production issues.
• By the end of your first year, you'll be a recognized technical leader on the team, having driven at least one cross-cutting initiative that improved stability or contributor experience across our stack, and actively mentoring other engineers or scientist contributors.

The approximate base salary range for this position is $145,920 - $191,047. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

Compensation will vary based on individual factors such as education, qualifications, and experience of the final candidate(s), specific office location, and calibration against relevant market data and internal team equity. Posted base salary figures are subject to change as new market data becomes available. Our benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, matching 401(k), unlimited PTO and paid holidays, parental/adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided when a candidate receives an offer of employment.

At IonQ, we believe in fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all while striving to identify and eliminate barriers. We empower employees to thrive by fostering a culture of autonomy, productivity, and respect. We are dedicated to creating an environment where individuals can feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.

We are committed to equity and justice. We welcome different voices and viewpoints and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

US Technical Jobs

The position you are applying for will require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control and government contract restrictions. Employment with IonQ is contingent on either verifying "U.S. Person" (e.g., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum) status for export controls and government contracts work, obtaining any necessary license, and/or confirming the availability of a license exception under U.S. export controls. Please note that in the absence of confirming you are a U.S. Person for export control and government contracts work purposes, IonQ may choose not to apply for a license or decline to use a license exception (if available) for you to access export-controlled technology that may require authorization, and similarly, you may not qualify for government contracts work that requires U.S. Persons, and IonQ may decline to proceed with your application on those bases alone. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.

US Non-Technical Jobs

Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.