Senior Staff DevOps Engineer

Senior Staff DevOps Engineer

IonQ is seeking a Senior Staff DevOps Engineer to join our Quantum Platform Network Security Engineering Team. This role is based out of our Denver, CO office, and we offer a hybrid work model, allowing for remote work a few days per week. Travel: Up to 25%.

The Role:

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 be responsible for leading CI/CD pipeline strategy, deployment automation architecture, release management, and GitOps practices. This role owns the pipeline platform — shared libraries, templates, standards, and tooling — that enables all application teams and infrastructure services to build and deploy through self-service, while collaborating closely with Architecture on IaC standards and with SRE on deployment reliability.

Responsibilities:

• Own the CI/CD pipeline platform: design, build, and maintain shared pipeline libraries, reusable templates, and standards that enable application teams to configure their own pipeline instances via self-service.
• Maintain infrastructure-specific pipelines directly.
• Define and implement deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling, feature flags) that minimize deployment risk and enable rapid rollback.
• Own end-to-end release management for infrastructure and product services: define versioning strategies, coordinate cross-service releases, manage release trains, and make release go/no-go decisions in partnership with Security (vulnerability gate) and SRE (reliability readiness).
• Ensure every release cycle includes a risk assessment checkpoint: vulnerability scan results reviewed, dependency risk evaluated, compliance posture confirmed, and rollback plan validated before production promotion.
• Establish and maintain GitOps practices using declarative infrastructure and application definitions stored in version control as the single source of truth.
• Develop, test, and maintain IaC modules (OpenTofu modules, Terragrunt configurations, Packer templates, Ansible playbooks, Helm charts, Kustomize overlays) following patterns defined by Architecture.
• Build and maintain self-service developer portals, environment provisioning tools, and internal developer platforms that enable developers to trigger deployments and provision environments without DevOps intervention.
• Track and report on DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR) and SDLC health indicators using Jira for sprint velocity, backlog health, and cross-team dependency tracking; identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement.
• Design, build, and operate agentic workflows using AWS Agent Core to automate repetitive DevOps tasks including pipeline failure triage, dependency update orchestration, environment provisioning, release coordination, and intelligent deployment decision-making.
• Continuously identify candidates for agentic automation across daily operations.
• Instrument deployments with observability, configure SLO monitoring for pipelines, implement canary analysis and automated rollback, and participate in incident response.

Requirements:

• 5 years of hands-on expertise in Pipeline Orchestration (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) and advanced Git workflows, including experience utilizing GitHub Actions OIDC and Workload Identity Federation.
• 5 years of practical application in Scripting Languages (Python, Bash, Go).
• 4 years of direct experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible).
• 4 years of demonstrated background in Containerization (Docker, Buildah) and Kubernetes deployment/operations (EKS, Kyverno, Bottlerocket), alongside a proven track record with GitOps practices (Flux, Helm) and artifact management (Artifactory, Nexus, ECR/ACR/GAR).
• Technical proficiency integrating pipeline security scanning (SAST, DAST, SCA), container scanning, and IaC validation/testing (Trivy, native OpenTofu test frameworks).
• Established background implementing AI Ops and Agentic Frameworks, including AWS Agent Core and LLM-based automation.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• Kubernetes administrator or developer certification (CKA/CKAD).
• Experience supporting Event Streaming Platforms (MSK/Kafka, IAM auth, TLS).
• Experience with internal developer platforms (Backstage, Port).
• Background in platform engineering at scale (100+ developers).
• Experience with multi-environment promotion strategies.
• Experience with SBOM generation (Syft, CycloneDX), Cosign artifact signing, and supply chain security.
• DevSecOps pipeline design and vulnerability management at scale.
• Experience with AI Ops, intelligent automation, or agentic AI frameworks for operational tasks.
• Experience with AWS Agent Core or equivalent agentic orchestration platforms.

The approximate base salary range for this position is $167,808 - $219,704. 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 401K, 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!