{"id":144017,"url":"https://alion.io/job/conductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap","title":"Quantum Engineer (Ion Trap)","company":{"id":45653,"name":"Conductor Quantum","domain":"conductorquantum.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/conductor-quantum","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Work at a Startup","truth_index":null},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"junior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":120000,"max":180000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":180000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":1,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"ChatGPT","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Error Budget","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-28T05:00:55Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-14","last_verified_at":"2026-10-17T07:57:49Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":50,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":50},"description":"Conductor Quantum is building quantum superintelligence.\nQuantum superintelligence is an AI that uses quantum computers to surpass the capabilities of humanity's greatest minds. We are closer to that inflection point than most people realize. Frontier models are approaching general intelligence, and AI can already generate quantum circuits faster than humans can write them. The question is no longer whether quantum and AI converge; it is who builds the infrastructure to make that convergence reliable, scalable, and useful.\nThat infrastructure starts with the hardware. The biggest bottleneck in quantum computing today is not qubit count; it is the manual configuration that keeps those qubits from being usable. Our software automates calibration and operations across qubit platforms, turning raw hardware into a stable, ready-to-run platform accessible through a simple chat interface. By solving that bottleneck, we are enabling thousands, and eventually billions, of qubits to operate at scale.\nThe result is a quantum computer as easy to use as ChatGPT. The first billion users are coming. The majority, we believe, will be AI agents.\nWhy now\nToday, AI generates production code faster and more reliably than most of the world's software engineers. Code is math; math is an instruction set; an instruction set is a quantum circuit. AI is already generating quantum circuits. It just needs reliable hardware to run them on, well-calibrated qubits to use, and a feedback loop tight enough to discover new algorithms autonomously.\nThe world's most capable AI models are being pointed at B2B SaaS. We are pointing ours at the frontier of science.\nRole overview\nYou will work across the full trapped ion stack: from developing the calibration that makes an ion trap run itself, all the way to hosting it online as a platform that human researchers and AI agents can build on. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role. You will define best practices, influence product strategy, and help lay the foundation for Conductor Quantum's culture and growth.\nKey responsibilities\nIon loading and cooling\nDevelop the routines that carry a system from an empty trap to a cold, ordered ion chain. Drive up loading reliability, Doppler and sideband cooling, and chain lifetime. Cut the time it takes to reach a chain that is ready to run.\nQubit control and characterization\nPush single-qubit and Mølmer-Sørensen two-qubit gates to the fidelity our partners need. Calibrate, benchmark, and know whether the remaining error is coming from motional heating, laser noise, or mode structure. Own shuttling fidelity where the system uses it, including the electrode waveforms that move ions without heating them.\nCalibration automation\nEncode expert tuning into software the platform runs on its own. Close the loop with the software and machine learning teams so calibration recovers without a physicist in the room.\nSystem performance and control stack\nDevelop what keeps a system stable and online. Diagnose micromotion, mode drift, ion loss, and fidelity degradation, and define the monitoring and recovery a trapped ion system needs to run unattended. Write or adapt control software for acousto-optic modulators, arbitrary waveform generators, direct digital synthesizers, field-programmable gate arrays, and multichannel direct current voltage sources. Build the drivers and abstractions that let one control stack speak to many systems.\nCollaboration and system integration\nWork closely with physicists, machine learning engineers, and backend developers to integrate hardware, software, and data pipelines into a unified quantum control stack. Provide feedback on usability, stability, and performance from a hardware and systems perspective.\nFirst 30 / 60 / 90 days\n30 days\nGet fluent in the calibration software stack and understand how it maps to trapped ion hardware.\nDevelop your first calibration sequence end to end, from ion loading to two-qubit gate fidelity.\nSit with customers and partners to see where the platform breaks down for them. Pick the friction point that annoys you most.\n60 days\nDevelop a full calibration cycle end to end, from an empty trap to two-qubit gates.\nShip your first contribution to the automated calibration routines. Start with cooling, single-qubit gates, or Mølmer-Sørensen two-qubit gates.\nFix the friction point you found in your first month, and propose the highest leverage things the team can do in trapped ions.\n90 days\nHave at least one calibration improvement in production that has moved a key metric. Two-qubit gate fidelity, heating rate, and time to a ready chain are examples of what we track.\nLead trapped ion operations at Conductor.\nDrive the control and calibration roadmap, including which systems we bring onto the platform next and whether the control stack transfers between them.\nThe team\nWe are a small, passionate founding team of quantum physicists, hardware engineers, and machine learning experts. Our founders, Brandon and Joel, met each other at Oxford during their PhDs working on AI for quantum computing. There they saw first-hand that calibration and control is a core bottleneck to scaling quantum computers.\nThis is your opportunity to do the best work of your life as part of that founding team.\nWho we are looking for\nHigh intelligence, high energy, and high integrity. Obsessive about where the error budget goes. Relish the challenge and chaos of real hardware. People who are hungry to change the world and do not need to be told what to do next.\nPerks\nFree healthcare, dental, and vision\nWork on the most important technical problem of our generation\nTwo 30-minute conversations with the founders.\nA technical round covering system design, coding, and physics and math.\nA paid two-day in-person trial with the team.","description_format":"text","description_chars":5795,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":1,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Quantum Science & Computing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-28T05:00:55Z"},{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-30T14:01:28Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":16,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.446,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":50,"expected_fill_days":28,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:junior"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":180000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/conductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/conductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T08:46:04Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":11744,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":45653},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=45653"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fconductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fconductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fconductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/conductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fconductor-quantum-quantum-engineer-ion-trap"}]}