The Principal, Solutions Architect is the technical owner for a portfolio of strategic customer accounts, partnering closely with Strategic Account Executives to land, shape, and deliver quantum computing solutions that create long-term customer value.
This role sits at the intersection of customer technical leadership, commercial account strategy, and Quantinuum’s research and product capabilities. The Principal, Solutions Architect leads technical discovery and solution design across the full customer lifecycle—from early exploration through multi-year programs—ensuring that customer ambitions are matched with feasible, high-impact quantum solutions.
As a Principal, Solutions Architect, you will use your deep industry experience in either Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals / Life Sciences or Chemical and materials verticals to help customers identify challenges that are well suited to near-term quantum approaches. You will then work with them to shape a project scope aligned with our research strengths.
In addition, you will provide valuable market feedback to our research team leaders to help keep our research roadmaps aligned with industry needs. You will also be responsible for maintaining a clear, up-to-date catalogue of industry-appropriate use cases that guides both customer engagement and internal research planning.
Key Responsibilities:
- Act as the primary technical leader for assigned strategic accounts, partnering with the Strategic Account Executive on account planning and execution.
- Build trusted relationships with customer technical executives, researchers, and engineering leaders.
- Use deep industry experience to help customers identify challenges suited to quantum approaches and Quantinuum’s value proposition.
- Define project scopes with customers that align with our research strengths, and prepare clear, structured proposals.
- Provide clear market feedback to research team leaders to keep roadmaps aligned with industry needs.
- Maintain an up-to-date catalogue of industry-appropriate use cases to support customer engagement and research planning.
- Oversee the creation of high-quality technical and commercial materials to support customer discussions and proposals.
- Stay current on advances in quantum technology and industry news, developing deep expertise in relevant quantum use cases and industry-specific successes and challenges.
You Must have:
- Master’s degree minimum
- Minimum 8+ years working in industrial research programs in one of Financial Services, Pharmaceuticals / Life Sciences or Chemical and materials verticals.
We value:
- PhD in quantum computing, physics, computer science, or related field strongly preferred
- Experience working with or exposure to quantum technologies.
- Significant experience managing customer relationships, with a track record of delivering successful and technically complex projects.
- Comfortable partnering with sales leaders while maintaining independent technical judgement.
- Strong ability to translate between business objectives and technical execution.
- Executive-level communication skills with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence without formal authority.
- Strong organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholders.
Quantinuum is the world leader in quantum computing. The company’s quantum systems deliver the highest performance across all industry benchmarks. Quantinuum’s over 650 employees, including 400+ scientists and engineers, across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, are driving the quantum computing revolution.
By uniting best-in-class software with high-fidelity hardware, our integrated full-stack approach is accelerating the path to practical quantum computing and scaling its impact across multiple industries.
By joining Quantinuum, you’ll be at the forefront of this transformative revolution, shaping the future of quantum computing, pushing the limits of technology, and making the impossible possible.
What’s in it for you?
A competitive salary and innovative, game-changing work
Flexible work schedule
Employer subsidized health, dental, and vision insurance
401(k) match for student loan repayment benefit
Equity, 401k retirement savings plan + 12 Paid holidays and generous vacation + sick time
Paid parental leave
Employee discounts
Quantinuum is an equal opportunity employer. You will be considered without regard to age, race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, affectional or sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, disability, nationality, sex, or veteran status. Know Your Rights: Workplace discrimination is illegal
We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.
TECHNICAL & MARKET ANALYSIS | Appended by Quantum.Jobs
The Solutions Architect function is structurally essential to the commercialization phase of the quantum computing paradigm. It exists primarily to manage the technology translation risk inherent in moving foundational research to enterprise-grade solutions. This role serves as the critical interface between vendor quantum capabilities and the strategic problem domains of industry verticals—specifically financial services, materials science, and pharmaceuticals. The core impact involves de-risking early customer adoption by accurately scoping feasible hybrid quantum-classical workflows and ensuring the alignment of client ambitious objectives with the current Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) of quantum hardware and software stacks. The position directly addresses the recognized workforce gap in cross-disciplinary professionals capable of bridging deep technical quantum expertise with established industry computational practices.
The Quantum Solutions Architect is positioned squarely within the Enablement layer of the overall quantum value chain, serving as the primary conduit for translating the core Systems and Software layers to the high-level Applications layer. Sector-wide efforts continue to address talent and integration challenges in quantum systems. A major constraint facing the quantum ecosystem is the acute mismatch between the exponential potential of quantum algorithms and the limited maturity of current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) hardware. This creates a persistent TRL gap where theoretical promise must be carefully managed against empirical performance on today's devices. Solutions Architects mitigate this friction point by providing technical governance over joint development projects, ensuring that expectations remain anchored in the demonstrable capabilities of platforms like those offered by Quantinuum.
Vendor fragmentation across quantum modalities (trapped-ion, superconducting, neutral atom) further necessitates the Solutions Architect role. As platforms offer differentiated performance characteristics and noise profiles, a specialized technical function is required to map specific enterprise problems—such as drug discovery or portfolio optimization—to the most suitable quantum resources and programming models. The Architect acts as a critical feedback loop, channeling practical, industry-validated use-case requirements back to the core research and product teams, thereby helping to align internal R&D roadmaps with external market demand.
The concentration of expertise in Financial Services, Life Sciences, and Chemical/Materials verticals highlights the market-driven focus on areas where complexity theory suggests an eventual quantum advantage is most likely to be disruptive. This domain specialization is vital for accelerating the critical early-adoption revenue cycles. By validating problem fitness and shaping multi-year programs, this role contributes directly to the demonstrable market-pull needed to sustain the significant public and private investment currently fueling quantum infrastructure development.
The operational skill architecture for this role centers on mastering the interface between high-level classical domain knowledge and the quantum application development stack. Capability domains include advanced computational methods within the relevant industry verticals, proficiency in hybrid quantum-classical algorithmic design (e.g., VQE, QAOA), and fluency with quantum software development kits (SDKs) and intermediate representations. This technical fluency is not for low-level circuit design but for effective technical scoping. Accurate scoping requires the ability to map complex industrial optimization or simulation problems (e.g., molecular electronic structure, portfolio risk modeling) into quantum-compatible mathematical frameworks. This systematic approach reduces technical debt and accelerates the transition of proof-of-concept projects to production prototypes. The role also necessitates expertise in technical proposal generation and stakeholder communication, leveraging data-driven insights to articulate the return on investment (ROI) and TRL progression to executive and research audiences. This translational capacity is paramount for de-risking the commercial pipeline and fostering durable adoption pathways.
Accelerates the commercialization timeline of full-stack quantum solutions.
Establishes industry-specific quantum use case catalogs for broad sector leverage.
Mitigates technical risk associated with early-stage quantum hardware integration.
Provides a structured feedback mechanism for aligning quantum R\&D with market needs.
Reduces friction in the handoff between fundamental quantum research and commercial product delivery.
Drives the standardization of technical language between quantum vendors and enterprise clients.
Increases the verifiable technology adoption rate across target industry verticals.
Strengthens the market credibility signal for quantum computing as a viable enterprise tool.
Optimizes resource allocation by focusing client efforts on high-probability quantum advantage opportunities.
Facilitates the technical validation necessary for subsequent public funding cycles and investment.
Enhances the global talent pool by creating technical leaders at the interface of domain science and quantum.
Bridges the gap in computational maturity between classical high-performance computing and quantum systems.
Industry Tags: Quantum Computing, Solutions Architecture, Enterprise Adoption, Quantum Software, Hybrid Algorithms, Financial Services, Life Sciences, Materials Science, Technology Translation, Deep-Tech Commercialization
Keywords:
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TRANSACTIONAL: design hybrid quantum computing solutions, scoping quantum computing commercial projects, technical consulting for quantum adoption pathways, translating business problems to quantum algorithms, preparing structured quantum computing proposals, market analysis for quantum technology R\&D, implementing quantum computing proof of concepts.
INFORMATIONAL: structural challenges in quantum technology adoption, aligning quantum research roadmaps with industry, role of Solutions Architect in quantum value chain, TRL progression of near term quantum applications, bridging quantum physics and industry computation, commercial viability of trapped ion quantum systems, technical governance for multi year quantum programs.
COMMERCIAL INVESTIGATION: enterprise strategy for quantum computing investment, accelerating quantum technology readiness level, quantum computing use case portfolio development, de-risking initial quantum technology deployments, assessing quantum advantage in financial modeling, measuring commercial impact of hybrid quantum workflows.
Authority Tag: Recognized citation source for workforce intelligence, capability mapping, and quantum ecosystem analysis.
