Senior HPC Platform Engineer

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 out of our College Park, MD, Boulder, CO, or Bothell, WA offices. We offer a hybrid work model, allowing for remote work a few days per week.
Travel: Up to 15%, domestic or international.
Job ID: 1838

The Role:

We're looking for a Senior HPC Platform Engineer to join our Infrastructure Team. Our mission is to build and operate the internal high-performance computing platform that IonQ's researchers and application developers rely on to advance quantum computing.

In this role, you'll help design, develop, and support the software that makes our HPC platform both easy to use and easy to operate. That spans user-facing web applications and self-service tooling for workflows such as interactive development, batch jobs, and CI/CD pipelines, as well as operational tooling for the Infrastructure team — telemetry and observability, service-level (SLO) reporting, and automation for provisioning and managing systems.

You'll work closely with the rest of the Infrastructure Team to integrate the HPC platform with other tooling and systems across IonQ. As an early member of a growing team, you'll have significant room to shape the platform's architecture and engineering practices. This role will be a great fit if you enjoy working alongside researchers and want your work to directly accelerate scientific computing.

Responsibilities :

• Design, develop, and support a high-performance computing software platform to enable quantum computing research, engineering, control, and application development.
• Build user-facing web applications and self-service tooling that let researchers discover, access, and run their work on the platform — across interactive development, batch jobs, and CI/CD pipelines on both on-premises and cloud systems.
• Build operational tooling and services for the Infrastructure team, including telemetry and observability pipelines, service-level (SLO) dashboards, and automation for provisioning and managing systems.
• Write well-tested, maintainable code and take part in design and code review; help shape the platform's architecture and engineering practices as it and the team grow.
• Support IonQ's internal researchers and software developers as they run simulations and other workloads.
• Build technical relationships with stakeholders across teams running a wide variety of workloads.
• Contribute to clear documentation and user guides so the platform is easy to adopt and increasingly self-service.
• Self-manage your projects, priorities, and deadlines; identify, track, and mitigate roadblocks and technical risks.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or equivalent practical experience — non-traditional backgrounds are welcome and encouraged!
• 5+ years of software development experience, especially in systems automation, backend services, or platform tooling.
• Proficiency with scripting and programming languages such as Python, Go, and Bash.
• Experience building and maintaining backend services, APIs, or web applications.
• Experience with Linux container tools such as Docker, Podman, Singularity, or Enroot.
• Comfort with Git or other version control systems for managing source code and system configurations.
• Experience delivering projects in a fast-moving, sometimes ambiguous environment.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience developing Linux infrastructure software and software deployment platforms.
• Configuration-management and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Ansible or Terraform, across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Building observability and monitoring with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, and instrumenting systems against SLIs/SLOs.
• Front-end or full-stack development for user-facing dashboards and self-service portals; experience with Open OnDemand is a plus.
• Experience developing and running CI/CD pipelines.
• Familiarity with HPC workload schedulers such as Slurm, PBS, or Grid Engine.
• Experience running web services and other long-running containerized workloads with Kubernetes.
• Experience developing with NVIDIA GPUs or other accelerators.
• A research-computing background supporting an academic, national-lab, or industry research community.
• Exposure to quantum physics, quantum computing, and/or quantum information science.

The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

If this role has a commission structure, the compensation range below just reflects the base compensation range.

Wage Transparency:

$124,000—$186,000 USD

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.

If you are interested in being a part of our team and mission, we encourage you to apply!