{"id":2400009,"url":"https://alion.io/job/silicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer","title":"AI Engineer","company":{"id":50887,"name":"Silicon Quantum Computing","domain":"sqc.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/sqc","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":null},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"middle","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Sydney, Australia"],"countries":["AU"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":4,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"Function Calling","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM Evaluation","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"Tool Use","optional":false},{"name":"Ansible","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"Terraform","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-12T22:39:55Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-12","last_verified_at":"2026-10-13T05:24:36Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC) is at the forefront of global efforts to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer, while delivering quantum-enhanced AI and simulation products to customers today.\nBacked by over 25 years of technological excellence, SQC is a full-stack quantum computing company that leverages its proprietary manufacturing process to engineer atomic qubits in silicon with 0.13 nanometer precision. It is the most precise semiconductor manufacturing in the world, enabling systems with world-leading algorithmic fidelity, and a decisive advantage in the global quantum computing race.\nOur products are commercially deployed and generating revenue. Watermelon, our quantum-enhanced AI system, is delivering superior results on real-world problems across energy, telecom and finance. Quantum Twins, our simulation platform, provides unparalleled ability to model quantum systems, accelerating molecule and materials discovery.\nThis is SQC: building the future of computing while delivering quantum impact today.\nAbout the role\nWe are hiring an AI Engineer into Applied AI, the team that builds agentic capability across SQC's engineering, science, manufacturing and corporate teams, and runs the platform it is built on.\nYou will embed with a different host team every three to four months, across engineering, research, manufacturing and the corporate functions, and learn how each one actually works, digitally and physically, before you build anything for it. One rotation might be inspection tooling for lithography; the next, tracking devices through fabrication; the next, a corporate workflow nobody has automated. At the frontier of quantum computing, the problems arrive unsolved, often unstated, and with little precedent to copy.\nYou map the problem and the operating environment, then own what you build. Some of it will be messy. Getting it right takes judgement about data, system design and risk, not just prompting. Alongside the agents, you will teach as you go, so the capability outlasts the rotation. Applied AI sets the sequence of rotations and agrees with each host team what it commits before you arrive.\nBased in Sydney, you will work hands-on with physicists, fabrication staff, engineers and corporate teams. This is a role for someone properly deep in applied AI: someone who thinks in loops and graphs, reaches for backpressure and ontologies before a bigger prompt, and already builds with agents as their default way of working.\nRole responsibilities\nWork with the host team to define and deliver agentic capabilities, inside their domain and their constraints\nModel the domain before you automate it: the ontology, the data, and the state that has to match what is happening on the bench\nFind the quick wins and the fundamental shifts in how a team operates, prioritise between them, and deliver through the rotation\nBuild, optimise and evaluate production agents\nDecide what the model does and what code does\nDesign for backpressure, retries and idempotency; your agents sit in front of instruments, fab equipment and inference endpoints, and all of them have limits and bad days\nSay plainly what an agent will and will not do, including when a problem does not need one\nBuild on the Applied AI platform (inference, MCP and web proxies, the evaluation harness, the agent registry and orchestration), improving it rather than working around it, and taking your share of running it\nAccount for the impact and the cost of what you build, in terms the host team can defend after you have gone\nHand over completely: code, runbook, evaluation and ownership to the host team, with no maintenance tail and no system that depends on one person remaining in the room\nLeave the host team more capable than you found them: the training, the habits and the judgement that outlast the agent\nYour experience\nEssential\n4+ years building and running production software, with responsibility for it after release, and a record of shipping\nBuilding, optimising and evaluating production agents or LLM-backed systems, beyond prototypes and demos\nStrong Python, Go, Rust or C++\nAgent-first practice: coding agents are already your default way of working\nTool use and context design, and the practical business of making an agent reliable rather than impressive (you can pick up our harness, MCP and proxy stack here)\nAccountability for an inference budget, even for a single agent: you have had to justify the spend and keep it inside a number\nHigh autonomy: you have worked embedded in someone else's team, without daily supervision, and been effective there\nWorking directly with people who are not software engineers, and translating what they describe into what they need\nThe judgement to say a problem does not need an agent, and to hold that position with a keen stakeholder\nLearning an unfamiliar domain quickly enough to be useful in it within weeks\nHandover as a habit: documentation, runbooks and tests good enough for someone else to own what you built\nClear technical writing, and the ability to diagram a system so someone else can follow it\nNice to have\nRetrieval over messy internal data: documents, wikis, tickets, instrument output\nEvaluation practice: building the harness, offline and online scoring\nData engineering: pipelines, storage and the modelling that has to match a real-world process\nEnough frontend to give a user something usable\nScientific, laboratory or manufacturing environments, and users whose requirements arrive as a problem rather than a specification\nConsulting, internal platform or enablement work, where the deliverable was someone else's capability\nOn-premise or air-gapped environments, including work with material that cannot leave the building\nInfrastructure as code and container orchestration (Terraform, Ansible, Kubernetes)\nQuantum computing exposure of any kind (no physics degree required)\nEqual opportunity\nSQC is an equal opportunity employer. We value diverse perspectives and experiences, and encourage applications from candidates who may not meet every listed requirement. If you’re excited about the role and believe you can contribute, we encourage you to apply.\nExport controls\nThis position may require access to export-controlled information or technology. Employment may be subject to applicable export control laws and may require eligibility assessment based on factors such as nationality, citizenship, or residency, and, where necessary, obtaining relevant export licenses or approvals.\nAbout SQC\nSQC was founded by renowned physicist and materials scientist Michelle Simmons, who pioneered the field of atomic electronics, including the development of the world’s first single-atom transistor and the first integrated circuit built with atomic precision. Our Chair, Simon Segars, former CEO of Arm, is a leader in the semiconductor industry and was instrumental in developing the processors that powered the mobile computing revolution.\nAs a full-stack company with in-house QPU manufacturing, SQC can design, produce and test new quantum chips in under a week, enabling rapid iteration and a decisive advantage in the race to build the world’s first commercial-scale quantum computer.\nSQC is a high-accountability environment built on a simple principle: Every Atom Counts. If you’re looking to play a meaningful role in building the next frontier of computing, we’d love to hear from you.","description_format":"text","description_chars":7406,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":4,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Quantum Computing Hardware"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-12T23:16:47Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":55,"reasons":["conf:0","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-13T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/silicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/silicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-13T07:21:17Z","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":10830,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-14T00:00:00Z"}},"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":50887},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=50887"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsilicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer"},{"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%2Fsilicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer"},{"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%2Fsilicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer"},{"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/silicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsilicon-quantum-computing-ai-engineer"}]}