Staff Backend Software Engineer, Cloud Platform

About the role

About IonQ:

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.

Role Overview

Role:

We don't just build the world's best quantum computers: we want them to be usable by everyone, everywhere. We are looking for a Staff Backend Software Engineer to join the cross-functional team building the IonQ Cloud Platform, which connects our customers to our quantum computers through APIs, tools and partner clouds such as AWS, GCP and Azure. You will help build key components of the platform with our product, applications and systems teams and our scientists, to create the best quantum developer experience for our customers and partners.

The platform takes a customer's quantum job, breaks it down, compiles it, queues it, runs it on our hardware and returns the results, so without it the quantum job flow does not work. The team works at pace, closer to a small company than a large one, with requirements that change as the hardware, the compiler and the jobs themselves evolve. You do not need a quantum background, but you will need curiosity, humility and a willingness to ask questions while you learn the language of quantum.

Responsibilities:

Reporting to the Senior Manager of Cloud Engineering, you will work closely with the Infrastructure Engineering, Application Development and Operations teams to provide highly available, fault-tolerant cloud services. You will be a key contributor to the job processing pipeline that handles large, complex jobs asynchronously, and you will define API contracts with backend teams and take them from design through implementation to release.

Alongside new feature development for next year's roadmap, you will share responsibility for keeping the platform healthy: strengthening testing, observability and continuous delivery, improving stability and security, and taking part in on-call rotations and incident reviews. You will also integrate AI capabilities that improve the customer experience, use AI-assisted development tools responsibly, mentor engineers and drive technical alignment across teams.