We are looking for a Senior Counsel to join Quantinuum’s legal team on a permanent basis. Our company is in a period of significant growth. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced Senior Corporate Counsel to play a vital role in managing corporate contracts and legal activities for the company.
Reporting to the VP, Deputy Chief Legal Officer, the Senior Counsel is an important role in the business that will be based in London. You will be working closely with the legal team, to manage corporate contracts and transactional activities. Among key areas, the role will focus on drafting and negotiating commercial contracts, technology licensing agreements, SaaS agreements, scientific research and collaboration agreements, trademark branding and marketing agreements, employment contracts, as well as providing support on various compliance functions, including in relation to technology control, import and export laws, data protection and regulations. In addition, you will develop and codify policies and standard operating procedures, and support in their rollout and related training.
We have many leading scientists working for us developing products which will have a significant impact on everyday life in the future. Your legal expertise will enable our teams and the company to be successful.
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Key Responsibilities:
- Draft, review, and negotiate a broad range of commercial agreements, including technology licensing, SaaS, scientific research and collaboration agreements, branding and marketing contracts, employment agreements, and other corporate transactions.
- Provide pragmatic, business-focused legal advice to internal stakeholders across commercial, technical, scientific, and operational teams, enabling the company’s growth and innovation strategy.
- Partner closely with the VP, Deputy Chief Legal Officer and wider legal team to manage corporate legal activities and transactional workflows across multiple jurisdictions.
- Support compliance programmes relating to technology controls, import/export regulations, data protection, and other applicable regulatory frameworks, ensuring legal and operational risks are effectively managed.
- Develop, implement, and maintain legal policies, templates, and standard operating procedures to improve consistency, efficiency, and risk management across the business.
- Deliver legal training and guidance to internal teams to support awareness of contractual obligations, compliance requirements, and best practices.
- Collaborate cross-functionally with business leaders, scientists, product teams, HR, and commercial functions to provide timely and strategic legal input on new initiatives and partnerships.
- Identify opportunities to streamline legal processes, improve contract lifecycle management, and support scalable legal operations during a period of significant company growth.
- Support brand protection activities, including trademark-related matters and marketing/legal reviews.
- Assist with corporate governance, risk mitigation, and broader legal projects as required.
You must have:
- Minimum 8-10 years of post-qualification legal experience
- US or UK Law Degree
- Admitted and registered as a solicitor in the UK or to practice in the US
Desirable:
- Excellent research, writing and drafting skills
- Exceptional communication skills (oral and written)
- Strong organizational skills
- Incisive analytical thinker and a self-starter
- Energetic and dynamic
- Ability to work autonomously and as part of a team
- Ability to work under tight timeframes
- Company secretarial experience
- Experience of working in scientific, software engineering or computer science industries
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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 evolution of the quantum computing sector from fundamental research to commercial deployment necessitates a specialized legal architecture to govern complex intellectual property and multi-jurisdictional compliance. This role type serves as a critical interface between scientific innovation and market-ready infrastructure, ensuring that high-value technological breakthroughs are successfully translated into enforceable commercial frameworks. As the global value chain moves toward Quantum-as-a-Service models, the existence of expert counsel is essential to mitigate the significant risks associated with dual-use technology controls and nascent regulatory environments. Market signals from the QED-C and OECD indicate that the scarcity of legal professionals with deep-tech literacy is a primary bottleneck for scaling high-growth entities. By formalizing the contractual relationships that underpin international research collaborations and hardware-software integration, this function directly influences the speed and stability of commercialization.
The quantum computing ecosystem is currently transitioning through a pivotal phase of industrialization, moving beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations toward integrated, full-stack solutions. Within this value chain, legal and commercial enablement functions are as vital as hardware engineering for ensuring long-term sustainability. Macro-level constraints, particularly the fragmentation of intellectual property landscapes and the lack of standardized contracting for quantum-specific resources, present significant barriers to entry for enterprise-scale adopters. Current industry dynamics are further complicated by shifting international trade regulations and export controls on cryogenic and semiconductor-related technologies, which require expert navigational capabilities to ensure operational continuity across borders.
National quantum strategies and public funding cycles emphasize the importance of secure, cross-functional partnerships between academic institutions and private enterprises. This role type addresses the inherent friction in these collaborations by establishing the governance models required for shared research and co-development. Furthermore, as the market moves toward a hybrid classical-quantum infrastructure, legal frameworks must evolve to account for novel data protection requirements and the unique liability profiles of probabilistic computing. The integration of quantum processors into existing cloud architectures creates complex SaaS and technology licensing challenges that generic commercial law fails to address.
Analytical reports from the global quantum workforce sector suggest that the ability to coordinate legal strategy with technical roadmaps is a key determinant of competitive advantage. This expertise enables entities to navigate the "quantum readiness" gap, where enterprise customers require high degrees of contractual certainty before committing to multi-year development programs. As institutional investment continues to flow into the sector, the presence of sophisticated legal governance acts as a vital credibility signal, reducing the perceived risk for stakeholders and accelerating the global adoption of transformative quantum technologies.
Capability domains for this role type are centered at the intersection of international trade law, intellectual property strategy, and deep-tech commercialization. Mastery of technology licensing is fundamental for managing the complex layering of software stacks and hardware components that characterize the current state of system development. These capabilities allow for the creation of robust contractual templates that address the specificities of quantum resource allocation, such as qubit time and algorithmic execution. Furthermore, expertise in global compliance frameworks provides the necessary leverage to manage the export of sensitive technologies, a prerequisite for maintaining a footprint in key markets like the US, UK, and Japan. This structural architecture facilitates the cross-functional coupling between scientific research and commercial operations, ensuring that legal safeguards are built directly into the product lifecycle.
Formalizes the intellectual property frameworks required for the global commercialization of quantum processors
Mitigates the operational risks associated with evolving dual-use technology export controls and trade regulations
Catalyzes the adoption of Quantum-as-a-Service by establishing standardized commercial licensing and SaaS models
Standardizes the legal protocols for high-stakes research collaborations between private industry and academic centers
Protects the long-term value of scientific breakthroughs through rigorous brand and trademark management strategies
Harmonizes cross-border legal activities to ensure operational consistency across diverse regulatory jurisdictions
Secures the supply chain by negotiating complex agreements for critical hardware components and specialized materials
Accelerates the path to market by streamlining the contract lifecycle for enterprise-level technology partnerships
Empowers internal technical teams through the development of scalable policies and standard operating procedures
Facilitates the transition to logical quantum computing by governing the licensing of error-correction software
Benchmarks the legal readiness of the organization against emerging national quantum security standards
Validates the commercial viability of new products through comprehensive marketing and regulatory compliance reviews
Industry Tags: Quantum Computing Commercialization, Deep Tech Legal Strategy, Technology Licensing, Dual-Use Export Controls, IP Protection, Quantum-as-a-Service, International Trade Compliance, Research Collaboration Governance, SaaS Agreements, Full-Stack Quantum Systems
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