We are seeking an R&D Manager - Software to lead the team developing Quantinuum's programming-language and compiler tools, including Guppy, HUGR and TKET. These tools form a core part of our quantum software stack, enabling developers and internal teams to translate high-level quantum programs into robust, executable systems.
This role combines technical leadership and people management in roughly equal parts. Working with software leadership and senior engineers, you will define and execute the technical roadmap, guide architectural decisions, and ensure that our language and compiler ecosystem is scalable, maintainable and ready for production use. You will remain technically engaged through design, code review, problem-solving and implementation.
Prior quantum-computing experience is valued but not required; demonstrated leadership
and strong, relevant software-engineering experience are essential.
This is a hybrid position based in our Cambridge office, with an expectation of working on site some days each week.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team of software engineers, setting clear expectations and supporting career development at every level.
- Define and deliver the team's roadmap jointly with software leadership and senior individual contributors, allocating capacity, tracking progress, and managing priorities, risks, dependencies and cross-team handoffs.
- Provide technical leadership across the language, compiler and developer-tooling stack.
- Guide software through the full development lifecycle, from research and prototyping to tested, documented and production-ready releases.
- Partner with research, applications, product, hardware and other software teams in the UK and US to align interfaces and ensure the software stack supports Quantinuum's quantum processors and priority use cases, with occasional travel to Quantinuum's US sites.
- Recruit, onboard and retain excellent engineers, and continuously improve the team's engineering and delivery practices.
YOU MUST HAVE:
- A bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering or a related field.
- Minimum five years of combined relevant experience in software engineering, compiler or programming-language development, or closely related technical R&D. Relevant postgraduate research, including master's and PhD study, may count towards this total.
- Demonstrated leadership of technical projects or teams, including shaping technical direction, mentoring engineers and coordinating delivery.
- Experience making and communicating architectural decisions for production software, with attention to testing, documentation and long-term maintainability.
- Strong planning and communication skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical disciplines.
WE VALUE:
- Experience developing quantum software, particularly quantum programming languages, compilers, intermediate representations, runtime systems or execution tooling.
- An understanding of quantum programming models, hardware-software co-design and the interaction between classical and quantum computation.
- Direct experience designing or implementing programming languages, type systems, compiler passes or intermediate representations.
- Experience developing production-quality software in Rust or Python.
- Previous experience as a line manager or team lead, including coaching, recruiting, onboarding and supporting engineers' career development.
- Experience leading or collaborating with geographically distributed technical teams.
- Experience contributing to or maintaining open-source software and working with developer communities.
- A track record of maturing research ideas and prototypes into software used by customers or other engineering teams.
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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 critical evolution of the quantum computing value chain from experimental setups to scalable, production-ready systems necessitates a profound stabilization of the software execution layer. Within this paradigm, the engineering management function overseeing programming languages and compiler infrastructures serves as a vital bridge between high-level algorithmic abstractions and underlying hardware topologies. By managing the systems that translate abstract quantum programs into deterministic machine instructions, this role type directly addresses the software stack fragmentation that currently challenges the deep-tech sector. Current industry focus lies on bridging classical and quantum capabilities at scale, requiring engineering structures that balance foundational scientific discovery with the delivery architectures of enterprise-grade software. Consequently, this leadership function mitigates systemic integration risks and secures long-term architectural scalability across the expanding quantum landscape.
The quantum software ecosystem is experiencing a structural shift as organizations transition from basic algorithmic prototyping toward the challenges of software maturity and execution reproducibility. At this stage of Technology Readiness Level progression, the primary bottleneck has expanded beyond pure hardware fidelity to include the optimization protocols of the compiler stack. The current industry landscape is characterized by diverse physical qubit modalities, which places a severe premium on hardware-agnostic intermediate representations capable of optimizing quantum code across varying gate sets and error-correction frameworks.
Furthermore, integrating quantum execution workloads into established high-performance computing frameworks presents significant architecture dependencies. Sector-wide efforts continue to address talent and integration challenges in quantum systems, particularly where classical runtime environments must seamlessly orchestrate low-latency co-processing with quantum processors. This technical bottleneck requires robust software infrastructure that can manage memory allocation, circuit routing, and multi-tenant optimization without introducing severe latency overheads.
From an ecosystem perspective, the sustainability of the open-source developer pipeline depends heavily on the standardization of developer tooling and intermediate layers. As public and private capital demands clearer paths to commercial utility, the software infrastructure layer must deliver predictable performance metrics. Robust engineering management at this level ensures that emerging software tools remain maintainable, scalable, and capable of supporting complex industrial workflows.
The capability architecture for this engineering management domain centers on the orchestration of advanced compiler infrastructure, language design patterns, and intermediate representations optimized for hybrid execution environments. Mastery over structural tooling layers, such as hardware-agnostic quantum intermediate languages and low-level optimization passes, is essential for maximizing the operational throughput of diverse hardware modalities. These capabilities are critical for minimizing the compilation overhead and maximizing gate-level efficiency across complex quantum circuits.
Moreover, the technical framework demands an advanced understanding of classical-quantum hybrid integration, ensuring that classical runtime systems effectively interface with quantum co-processors. This requires the synchronization of cross-functional domains, linking abstract algorithmic research with the rigorous automated testing and documentation protocols of enterprise-grade software development. By establishing standardized verification pipelines, this function enables the scalable migration of prototype designs into resilient software toolchains. - Accelerates the transition of theoretical quantum software concepts into standardized, production-ready enterprise applications
- Minimizes architectural translation friction between high-level algorithmic abstractions and low-level physical qubit instruction sets
- Enhances the optimization efficiency of hardware-agnostic compilers across diverse quantum processing unit architectures
- Strengthens the structural reliability of quantum intermediate representations within multi-tenant cloud execution environments
- Stabilizes the software delivery lifecycle by implementing rigorous regression testing and verification frameworks
- Promotes cross-platform interoperability by advancing open-source developer tools and unified compiler ecosystems
- Reduces computational latency overhead through the refinement of hybrid classical-quantum runtime execution protocols
- Facilitates scalable workforce leverage by bridging the gap between classical engineering practices and quantum domain specializations
- Mitigates long-term technical debt by enforcing strict documentation and maintainability standards across codebases
- Optimizes resource allocation within engineering units to balance exploratory prototyping with core systems stabilization
- Safeguards intellectual property value by converting abstract scientific discoveries into reusable software assets
- Supports global industrial adoption by ensuring quantum software stacks conform to emerging international compliance benchmarksIndustry Tags: Quantum Software Architecture, Compiler Engineering, Intermediate Representations, Systems Programming, Hybrid Quantum-Classical, Open Source Tooling, Technology Readiness Level, Software Optimization, Deep Tech Engineering
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