Senior Quantum Field Engineer
About the role
Senior Systems Integration Engineer on the Deployments team responsible for bringing Rigetti quantum processors to customer sites, ensuring production performance, and collaborating with R&D to improve device performance and scalability. Hybrid role based in the UK with international travel to customer sites.
Responsibilities
- Own the technical work for your track during on-site deployments: define scope, execute experiments or calibrations, validate against specification, and document outcomes.
- Debug failures and isolate root causes across hardware, software, and infrastructure; escalate findings and drive resolution cross-functionally.
- Act as the primary technical point of contact for customers during on-site engagements; communicate results clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Monitor deployed systems and proactively identify and respond to regressions, drift, or outages.
- Train team members and customer-side personnel on procedures, workflows, and best practices relevant to your track.
- Contribute to internal tooling, documentation, and automation to improve repeatability and reduce manual effort.
- Work with internal R&D teams to drive improvements to device performance at scale.
- Be available for international travel up to 10–25% of the time in support of customer deployments.
- Develop detailed experimental plans for each cooldown (Systems & Integration Track) or validate gate performance and calibrations (Gate Calibration & Deployment Track)
- Provide remote support to on-site teams as required between deployments (Systems & Integration Track)
- Bring up and fine-tune gate calibrations on production devices; maintain automated recalibration system for cloud-deployed processors (Gate Calibration & Deployment Track)
- Own deployment workflows for new gate calibrations: test, validate, stage, and release to production with minimal disruption to uptime (Gate Calibration & Deployment Track)
Qualifications
- PhD in Physics, Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, or a related field; or equivalent degree with relevant industry or postdoctoral experience (see track requirements below).
- Hands-on experience with superconducting qubit devices.
- Proficiency in Python in a scientific or engineering context.
- Strong systematic debugging skills: able to isolate failures across the full measurement chain (wiring, electronics, device, software).
- Comfort operating in customer-facing and field environments with limited on-site infrastructure support.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to write clear experimental reports and debrief non-specialists.
- Willingness and ability to travel internationally 10–25% of the time.
- MS/BS with 3+ years of relevant experience (or PhD).
- Systems & Integration Track additionally requires: Experience troubleshooting cryogenic microwave hardware.
- Gate Calibration & Deployment Track additionally requires: Experience calibrating and characterising 1Q and 2Q gates on superconducting qubit devices; Strong quantitative understanding of gate error sources; Experience writing high-quality code and participating in code reviews (Git).
Skills
Benefits
- Not specified in the provided description
About Rigetti Computing
Quantum coherent supercomputing.
Rigetti Computing is building the world’s most powerful computers to help solve humanity’s most pressing and important problems. These systems will perform computations that today’s fastest supercomputers are incapable of — unlocking entirely new classes of problems and offering a direct path to solutions. We are scientists, engineers, builders, and visionaries. We believe quantum computing is going to significantly affect health care, how we treat disease, how we generate energy, and how we feed humanity. Rigetti is the only company deploying full-stack solutions for hybrid classical/quantum computing. Our 19-qubit quantum computer is available online through our Forest platform, and the first commercially useful applications are already under exploration. We were founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, and are located Berkeley and Fremont, California.
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