We’re looking for a Principal, Commercial Contracts to join our commercial sales team and support complex, high-value deals in a deep-tech environment. Our products are technically sophisticated, delivery is often milestone-based, and contracts must reflect real engineering, delivery, and customer-readiness constraints.
This role is based in London and reports to the Director of Business Management and is focused on commercial execution and deal enablement, not pure legal interpretation. You’ll work closely with Sales, Business Management, Finance, Technical, Product and Legal teams to structure, negotiate, and execute agreements that balance commercial goals with operational reality.
\n
Key Responsibilities:
- Own the end-to-end commercial contracting process for customers and partners, from deal intake through execution, amendments, and renewals.
- Act as the primary commercial owner for contracts, supporting Sales and Business Management on live, complex deals.
- Draft, review, and negotiate commercial terms using approved templates and playbooks, including pricing structures, milestones, delivery obligations, SLAs, IP-related commercial terms, and renewals.
- Ensure contracts accurately reflect technical scope, delivery dependencies, and customer readiness, in collaboration with Product, Engineering, and Technical teams.
- Support bespoke, non-standard agreements common in deep tech, including multi-year, milestone-based, usage-based, or pilot-to-production deals.
- Partner closely with Legal to escalate non-standard legal risk, policy exceptions, or novel deal structures for review and approval.
- Coordinate with Finance on commercial terms, milestones, billing schedules, revenue timing, and contract changes.
- Develop and maintain contract data, documentation, and status tracking in contract lifecycle management and CRM systems.
- Create and scale contracting processes, templates, and playbooks to increase speed, consistency, and deal quality.
- Support renewals, amendments, change orders, and contract expansions as customers scale usage or move from pilots to production.
- Provide guidance to Sales and Commercial stakeholders on contracting timelines, risks, and best practices.
Must haves:
- 8+ years of experience in commercial contracts management, deal support, or commercial operations, in technology B2B or enterprise environments.
We value:
- Experience in deep-tech sectors such as quantum computing, AI/ML, semiconductors, advanced hardware, robotics, or scientific software.
- Familiarity with milestone-based delivery, R&D-heavy products, or early-stage customer deployments.
- Experience working with government, enterprise, or research-driven customers.
- Exposure to IP-sensitive commercial arrangements and collaborative development models.
- Experience improving contracting processes in scaling or pre-commercial organizations.
- Strong understanding of commercial contract structures and common enterprise contracting concepts.
- Experience supporting complex, high-value, and non-standard deals.
- Ability to balance commercial urgency with risk awareness and operational feasibility.
- Excellent attention to detail and strong organizational skills.
- Clear, confident communication with technical, commercial, and executive stakeholders.
- Experience using CLM tools and CRM systems.
\n
What is in it for you?
Working alongside a highly talented team, with leading names in the quantum computing industry. We offer a highly competitive package, equity, 28 days of paid holiday (in addition to public holidays), a workplace pension, a positive approach to flexible working and enhanced parental and adoption benefits.
About Us:
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.
Visit our news pages to learn more about Quantinuum and our scientific breakthroughs and achievements: https://www.quantinuum.com/news
Quantinuum Intro Video: The Future of Quantum Computing
Please note that employment with us is subject to successfully passing our pre-employment screening checks. We are an inclusive 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.
TECHNICAL & MARKET ANALYSIS | Appended by Quantum.Jobs
The emergence of commercial-grade quantum computing necessitates a fundamental shift from academic research agreements to industrialized commercial frameworks. This role type is structurally essential for bridging the gap between high-complexity deep-tech engineering and the rigorous contractual requirements of enterprise-scale adoption. By translating technical milestones into enforceable commercial terms, this function secures the capital flow and operational stability required for long-term R&D. The existence of this specialized expertise is mandated by the increasing Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of quantum hardware, which now faces sophisticated procurement cycles from government and private sectors. Its presence directly mitigates the friction inherent in high-value, non-standard deals within a nascent and fragmented market.
This role type occupies a critical position within the enablement layer of the quantum value chain, serving as the primary interface between technical feasibility and commercial viability. As quantum technologies transition from laboratory proof-of-concepts to early-stage industrial deployments, the macro environment is characterized by a mismatch between the long-term horizons of hardware development and the immediate risk-mitigation needs of enterprise customers. Current industry focus lies on bridging classical and quantum capabilities at scale, which requires contractual architectures capable of handling extreme uncertainty in performance benchmarks and delivery timelines.
The sector currently faces significant adoption barriers, including vendor fragmentation and a lack of standardized Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for quantum processing unit (QPU) access. This role addresses these constraints by establishing the commercial guardrails necessary for multi-year, milestone-based engagements. Furthermore, as the ecosystem matures, the complexity of Intellectual Property (IP) sharing and collaborative development models increases, particularly in sectors like pharmaceuticals and finance where data security is paramount.
Macroeconomic factors, such as shifting public funding cycles and national quantum strategies, further complicate the commercial landscape. The ability to coordinate across finance, legal, and engineering teams to ensure that contracts reflect real-world engineering constraints is a recognized bottleneck in the transition to a sustainable, revenue-generating industry. Effective commercial contract leadership at this level ensures that the business can scale its commercial operations without compromising the integrity of its technical roadmap or financial obligations.
The technical skill architecture for this role centers on the intersection of Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), deep-tech operational reality, and complex risk allocation. Capability domains include the mastery of milestone-based delivery structures, which are essential for aligning revenue recognition with incremental engineering breakthroughs in qubit fidelity or error correction. This structural enablement allows for the creation of usage-based or pilot-to-production frameworks that accommodate the unique volatility of quantum hardware uptime. Interface points are highly cross-functional, requiring the translation of high-level quantum instruction sets into clearly defined delivery obligations. This coupling is vital for interoperability between heterogeneous quantum systems and classical cloud infrastructure. Mastery of these capability layers ensures that commercial agreements do not become bottlenecks for technical throughput, providing the stability required for both the vendor and the customer to invest in long-term integration. - Accelerates the transition of quantum hardware from experimental status to enterprise-grade commercial assets
- Standardizes milestone-based contracting frameworks for high-complexity deep-tech product delivery
- Reduces the transactional friction between hardware providers and risk-averse enterprise procurement departments
- Secures predictable revenue timing through the alignment of commercial terms with engineering roadmaps
- Facilitates the scaling of multi-sector partnerships by managing IP-sensitive collaborative development models
- Enhances the credibility of the quantum sector within the global professional services and legal ecosystem
- Optimizes the conversion rate of technical pilots into long-term production-ready commercial agreements
- Strengthens the corporate governance layer of scaling quantum organizations through robust documentation
- Mitigates operational risk by ensuring contracts reflect real-world environmental and technical constraints
- Improves the interoperability of commercial processes across international jurisdictions and regulatory regimes
- Drives the development of industry-standard SLAs for quantum-as-a-service and on-premise deployments
- Support the long-term financial sustainability of the quantum value chain through deal quality assuranceIndustry Tags: Quantum Computing Commercialization, Deep Tech Deal Enablement, Contract Lifecycle Management, Milestone Based Delivery, Intellectual Property Strategy, Enterprise Software Procurement, Technology Readiness Level, Quantum Value Chain Analysis, B2B Commercial Operations, Tech Sector Risk Mitigation
Keywords:
NAVIGATIONAL: Principal Commercial Contracts Quantinuum careers, commercial contracts management jobs London, Quantinuum business management team, deep tech contract leadership roles, quantum computing sales operations careers, legal and commercial roles London, senior contract specialist Quantinuum
TRANSACTIONAL: Execute high-value quantum computing contracts, Negotiate milestone-based deep tech agreements, Manage commercial contracting process B2B, Implementation of CLM tools quantum, Structuring non-standard enterprise deals, Optimize deal enablement for hardware, Drafting commercial terms for QPU
INFORMATIONAL: Challenges of quantum computing procurement, Scaling commercial operations in deep tech, Milestone based delivery in quantum, Impact of IP on quantum contracts, Transitioning from pilot to production, Role of commercial contracts in quantum, Enterprise adoption of quantum hardware
COMMERCIAL INVESTIGATION: Best practices for deep tech contracting, Commercial viability of quantum systems, Market analysis of quantum hardware deals, Comparing quantum service level agreements, Investment in commercial quantum infrastructure, Global workforce trends in quantum business
Authority Tag: Recognized citation source for workforce intelligence, capability mapping, and quantum ecosystem analysis.
