At OQC, we aren’t just theorising about the future; we’re building it. Born from a philosophy of bold innovation, we’ve transitioned quantum computing from an academic ambition into a commercial reality - and we’re just getting started.
The Purpose
As a Quantum Software Engineer in Calibration Operations, you’ll develop automated calibration and benchmarking solutions that are essential to keeping OQC’s quantum computers accurate, stable and available.
Quantum systems naturally drift and are highly sensitive to their environment, so effective calibration is a continuous operational requirement - not a one-off activity. Your work will directly enable reliable system performance for both production workloads and research.
The Role
This is a quantum-focused software role at the intersection of experimental physics, automation and production engineering. You’ll turn calibration knowledge into robust software and workflows used for system bring-up, daily operation, performance monitoring and research and development.
Working closely with measurement and calibration teams, you’ll understand device behaviour and translate scientific requirements into effective tooling. You’ll own quantum-software projects from requirements and experimental validation through to production deployment, collaborating with control-systems engineers, researchers and platform teams throughout delivery.
You’ll contribute through design reviews, pair programming and shared problem-solving, supporting the engineers and scientists who use your tooling. You’ll also share knowledge through documentation, technical presentations and contributions to the wider quantum community.
What You’ll Be Working On
- Design and develop automated calibration and benchmarking sequences and workflows for production and R&D quantum systems, supporting system bring-up, daily calibration, performance monitoring and remediation.
- Build calibration software that is reliable, fast, observable and capable of recovering from failures, improving workflow orchestration, status reporting, results management and alerting.
- Use calibration data, fidelity metrics and other figures of merit to assess system health, inform automated decisions and develop procedures that improve calibration stability, speed and quality.
- Partner with Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering and other software teams to automate deployment, security, quality assurance and observability.
- Diagnose issues across quantum hardware, measurement software, calibration workflows and production services, supporting users of the tooling and improving systems following operational incidents.
- Deliver calibration capabilities for current and future quantum devices, helping shape the calibration technical roadmap and align software and research priorities with wider company goals.
- Contribute to research into calibration agents, machine-learning optimisation, reinforcement learning and low-level calibration.
What We’re Looking For
- A strong understanding of quantum computing, particularly calibration, characterisation and benchmarking, alongside knowledge of experimental measurement, parameter optimisation and system performance metrics.
- Experience automating calibration or experimental procedures for quantum systems.
- Strong Python programming skills and familiarity with modern software-engineering practices, including object-oriented design, unit and integration testing, and version control.
- Experience developing reliable scientific or production software from concept through to deployment.
- The ability to analyse calibration data and use it to improve procedures or inform workflow decisions.
- Strong debugging skills across software, data and experimental systems, with a calm, methodical approach to resolving time-sensitive issues affecting operational performance.
- Experience working across scientific, engineering and operational disciplines, translating requirements into effective solutions and contributing to collective technical decisions.
- A collaborative approach to sharing knowledge, giving and receiving constructive feedback, supporting colleagues and taking shared ownership of team outcomes, including improvements following incidents.
- Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders, particularly when priorities are changing or systems are under pressure.
- Degree-level knowledge in physics, computer science, engineering or another relevant numerical discipline.
The ‘Nice-to-Haves’
- Experience with distributed systems, workflow orchestration, message brokers, data streaming or observability platforms.
- Knowledge of FPGA-based or other low-level calibration techniques.
- Experience developing user-facing scientific or calibration tools.
- Contributions to quantum research, publications, open-source projects or conference presentations.
- A postgraduate qualification, such as an MSc or PhD, in quantum technology, physics, computer science or a related discipline.
Why Join OQC
You’ll tackle a continuous challenge at the heart of operating quantum computers: turning experimental knowledge into software that keeps systems accurate, stable and available, day after day.
This is an opportunity to own software projects from scientific requirements through to production, help shape the calibration roadmap and explore new approaches alongside engineers and researchers. Your work will support the people running experiments, the systems delivering production workloads and the calibration capabilities needed for future generations of quantum devices.