The Programs team ensures our external and internal research projects are delivered predictably, transparently, and in alignment with customer needs and internal priorities. Working closely with research leads, solutions architects, and commercial teams, the group provides the structure and clarity needed to turn scientific work into well-run projects.
As the Senior Manager, Programs Group, you will manage your own portfolio of complex scientific projects while shaping how the wider team delivers. You will use your technical literacy to translate scientific objectives into clear plans, manage the flow of work across multiple research teams, and ensure that progress, risks, and decisions are visible to both customers and internal leadership. Alongside your own delivery responsibilities, you will allocate resources across the Programs team, coach team members, and maintain consistent delivery discipline.
You will also strengthen how projects are executed across the group by defining and maintaining the team’s approach to leadership reporting, ensuring high-quality and consistent updates. In addition, you will sustain strong communication channels across research, commercial, and customer teams, and run retrospectives that drive continuous improvement in both individual projects and team practices.
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Responsibilities
- Ensure all internal and external research and delivery projects are well defined, with clear objectives, scope, milestones, success criteria, ownership, and governance, and that progress is reported in a consistent and appropriate manner to senior leadership.
- Design, deploy, and operate forecasting and capacity-planning systems to ensure sufficient resources are available to deliver customer projects alongside core research programs, proactively escalating hiring and resourcing needs with adequate lead time.
- Ensure the organization uses appropriate tools and systems for project tracking, resource management, and reporting, and that these are adopted and used consistently across teams.
- Build and maintain systems and processes to support financial and accounting requirements, including allocation of effort and working hours across projects, in close coordination with finance and operations teams.
- Establish and enforce effective scope management and change-control processes to prevent uncontrolled scope creep while enabling informed trade-offs where strategically necessary.
- Ensure project risks, dependencies, and delivery issues are identified early, escalated appropriately, and actively managed so that corrective actions are taken in a timely manner.
- Personally lead selected high-priority, high-complexity, or strategically critical programs in addition to overall management responsibilities.
- Provide line management for the Programs team, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, and career development.
- Act as the primary point of contact for questions related to project status, delivery commitments, and customer programs, ensuring clear and timely communication with internal leaders and external stakeholders as appropriate.
Must haves:
- Master’s degree in quantum computing, physics, computer science, or related field.
- 5+ years managing complex research programs with successful outcomes.
- Demonstrated experience leading or mentoring project or program managers in a technical environment.
We value:
- PhD in quantum computing, physics, computer science, or related field.
- Experience working with or exposure to quantum technologies.
- Experience managing customer relationships, with a track record of delivering successful and complex projects.
- Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence without formal authority.
- Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills; able to communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively.
- Strong organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholders.
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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 structural complexity of full-stack quantum computing necessitates a specialized leadership layer
capable of synchronizing multi-disciplinary research with commercial roadmap execution. As the
sector transitions from experimental prototypes to enterprise-grade systems, the role of strategic
program management becomes a critical determinant of throughput and reliability. This function
acts as the connective tissue between fundamental physics and industrialized delivery, addressing
the inherent volatility of scientific discovery through rigorous governance frameworks.
The global quantum ecosystem is currently undergoing a pivotal shift from laboratory-scale proof-of-concepts toward integrated system-level performance. Within this value chain, the enablement and coordination layer serves as the primary mechanism for managing the high degree of technical uncertainty associated with both superconducting and trapped-ion hardware modalities. Current macro constraints, particularly the scarcity of talent capable of translating complex quantum mechanics into executable industrial milestones, have made structured program leadership a rare but essential asset. As national quantum strategies in the US, UK, and Europe accelerate, the demand for delivery discipline has intensified to meet the rigorous standards of aerospace, defense, and financial services partners.
Furthermore, the maturation of the quantum software stack and its integration into hybrid classical-quantum workflows requires a high degree of cross-functional interoperability. Vendor fragmentation and the lack of standardized benchmarking across the industry present significant scalability bottlenecks. Leadership at the programs level is structurally positioned to mitigate these risks by enforcing architectural clarity and ensuring that internal research priorities remain aligned with evolving customer requirements. This alignment is critical for maintaining investor confidence and securing long-term public-private partnerships.
Current industry focus lies on bridging classical and quantum capabilities at scale, requiring sophisticated forecasting and capacity-planning systems. These systems are necessary to manage the resource-heavy requirements of cryogenic engineering and logical qubit development. By institutionalizing continuous improvement through retrospective analysis and standardized reporting, organizations can reduce the iteration cycles that historically hindered the commercialization of deep-tech innovations. Ultimately, the successful management of these scientific portfolios dictates the pace at which the industry achieves fault-tolerant quantum computing and broad-based economic impact.
The capability domain for this role type centers on the intersection of deep technical literacy and advanced systems engineering governance. Unlike traditional project management, this architecture requires an understanding of quantum-specific constraints, such as gate fidelity thresholds and decoherence mitigation, to effectively translate scientific objectives into industrialized plans. Structural enablement is achieved through the deployment of multi-layered tracking systems that interface research progress with commercial delivery windows. This ensures that the high-velocity flow of scientific work across disparate teams is harmonized with resource constraints and financial reporting requirements. Tooling maturity at this level involves the integration of capacity-planning frameworks that can account for the probabilistic nature of quantum research outcomes. These capabilities provide the leverage necessary to improve organizational stability and ensure interoperability across the hardware-software boundary. Furthermore, the ability to manage complex stakeholder environments facilitates the cross-functional coupling required to turn scientific breakthroughs into robust, customer-facing products. By establishing effective scope management and change-control protocols, this role type reduces the structural friction that often prevents deep-tech entities from scaling their operational footprint in the global marketplace. - Accelerates the transition of theoretical quantum research into industrialized, market-ready hardware and software solutions.
- Stabilizes the global quantum supply chain by institutionalizing predictable delivery milestones for critical sub-components.
- Reduces the structural risk associated with high-complexity scientific projects through rigorous governance and visibility.
- Enhances the viability of hybrid classical-quantum integration by streamlining cross-functional technical synchronization.
- Optimizes resource allocation across the value chain to ensure maximum throughput in logical qubit development.
- Mitigates the impact of global talent shortages by implementing scalable coaching and professional development frameworks.
- Facilitates the adoption of quantum technologies in regulated sectors through transparent reporting and compliance alignment.
- Strengthens investor and stakeholder confidence by providing high-fidelity clarity on research-to-commercialization timelines.
- Drives the standardization of benchmarking protocols across multi-disciplinary teams to improve ecosystem-level interoperability.
- Shortens the feedback loop between customer requirements and fundamental research through integrated communication channels.
- Improves the cost-efficiency of deep-tech development by enforcing strict scope management and resource forecasting discipline.
- Cultivates a high-authority reference model for operational excellence within the emerging global quantum economy.Industry Tags: Quantum Computing, Program Management, Deep Tech, Systems Engineering, Trapped Ion, Superconducting Circuits, Technology Readiness Level, Scientific Project Governance, Quantum Ecosystem Enablement, Enterprise Delivery
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