Staff Platform Engineer

📋 Job Overview

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.

🏢 About IonQ

We are looking for a Staff Platform Engineer to join the Quantum System Infrastructure team at IonQ, based in our Oxford office. In this role, you will be responsible for the platform that our engineering and science teams use to build, test and deliver quantum systems to customers, contributing to the team's mission of applying DevSecOps principles to deliver reliable, secure and observable infrastructure, on-site and in the cloud.

🎯 The Role

As a Staff Engineer you will play a leading role in shaping the clusters, pipelines, monitoring and remote development environments that support our work in building the world's most advanced quantum systems. You'll have the opportunity to drive meaningful work in a unique environment, operating alongside the physicists and engineers who build those systems, and see vacuum chambers, cryostats and lasers in action on site.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Run and evolve the Kubernetes platform behind each quantum system, and the release process that promotes software onto it (k3s, ArgoCD, Helm)
• Make CI faster and more reliable for every engineer, including our scarce hardware-in-the-loop and FPGA build runners and build caches (GitHub Actions)
• Make our systems observable: define dashboards and alerts as code for quantum system hardware such as lasers, cryogenics and vacuum, and move them onto IonQ's shared observability platform with our production Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) colleagues (Grafana, OpenTelemetry)
• Give every engineer and physicist a ready-to-use remote development environment, on-site or in the cloud, that works with our quantum system hardware
• Keep our on-site and cloud infrastructure secure, recoverable, reproducible and reviewable as code (OpenTofu, Atmos), from secrets and access to certificates and identity, and work with IonQ's infrastructure team on shared cloud services
• Lead technical decisions and write the runbooks and guides that let other teams change the platform safely themselves

📌 Required Qualifications

• 5+ years in a Platform, DevOps or Site Reliability role, running Linux systems in production
• Infrastructure as code with Terraform or OpenTofu
• Running containerised workloads on Kubernetes in production
• Building and speeding up CI/CD pipelines, ideally in GitHub Actions
• Observability and security for production systems: monitoring, alerting, secrets and access control

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Experience with AI coding tools is helpful, as is an interest in quantum computing though prior experience is not required.

🎁 Benefits

We offer a range of benefits, including opportunities to further your career alongside industry leaders, a competitive salary with IonQ stock options, an annual performance bonus, generous annual leave, flexible hybrid working, private medical and dental insurance for you and your family, and much more. Join us and be part of the future of quantum computing.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

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.