- Job title
- Quantum Engineer (Superconducting)
- Job location
- San Francisco, CA, US
- Job description
- Conductor Quantum is building quantum superintelligence.
Quantum superintelligence is an AI that uses quantum computers to surpass the capabilities of humanity's greatest minds. We are closer to that inflection point than most people realize. Frontier models are approaching general intelligence, and AI can already generate quantum circuits faster than humans can write them. The question is no longer whether quantum and AI converge; it is who builds the infrastructure to make that convergence reliable, scalable, and useful.
That infrastructure starts with the hardware. The biggest bottleneck in quantum computing today is not qubit count; it is the manual configuration that keeps those qubits from being usable. Our software automates calibration and operations across qubit platforms, turning raw hardware into a stable, ready-to-run platform accessible through a simple chat interface. By solving that bottleneck, we are enabling thousands, and eventually billions, of qubits to operate at scale.
The result is a quantum computer as easy to use as ChatGPT. The first billion users are coming. The majority, we believe, will be AI agents.
## Why now
Today, AI generates production code faster and more reliably than most of the world's software engineers. Code is math; math is an instruction set; an instruction set is a quantum circuit. AI is already generating quantum circuits. It just needs reliable hardware to run them on, well-calibrated qubits to use, and a feedback loop tight enough to discover new algorithms autonomously.
The world's most capable AI models are being pointed at B2B SaaS. We are pointing ours at the frontier of science.
## Role overview
You will work across the full quantum stack: from taking a superconducting qubit device through early bring-up, all the way to hosting it online as a platform that human researchers and AI agents can build on. This is a high-impact, high-ownership role. You will define best practices, influence product strategy, and help lay the foundation for Conductor Quantum's culture and growth.
## Key responsibilities
### Device bring-up and measurement infrastructure
Take superconducting qubit devices from post-fab packaging to operational readiness. Own chip mounting and cryogenic assembly including wirebonding, shielding, and thermalization. Design or adapt microwave-compatible printed circuit boards and enclosures for clean signal routing and filtering. Build and maintain dilution refrigerator setups including fridge wiring, line commissioning, and the attenuators, filters, isolators, circulators, switches, and low-noise amplifiers that go with them. Develop robust procedures for cooldowns and thermal cycling to maximize uptime.
### Qubit calibration and characterization
Take devices from cooldown to working qubits. Run core calibrations including resonator and qubit spectroscopy, Rabi, Ramsey, echo, energy relaxation and coherence times, readout optimization, and two-qubit gate calibration. Drive coherence, readout performance, and calibration time in the right direction, and know which one is limiting you.
### Calibration automation
Encode expert tuning into software the platform runs on its own. Turn spectroscopy, gate calibration, and readout optimization into routines that recover without a physicist in the room. Close the loop with the software and machine learning teams.
### System performance and control stack
Keep systems stable and online. Diagnose and mitigate spurs, crosstalk, leakage, two-level system defects, thermal population, and wiring or component failures. Define the monitoring, health checks, and recovery a superconducting system needs to run unattended. Lead setup and scaling of the experimental lab environment, and write or adapt control software for arbitrary waveform generators, microwave sources, direct current sources, digitizers, and field-programmable gate arrays.
### Collaboration and system integration
Work closely with physicists, machine learning engineers, and backend developers to integrate hardware, software, and data pipelines into a unified quantum control stack. Provide feedback on usability, stability, and performance from a hardware and systems perspective.
## First 30 / 60 / 90 days
### 30 days
* Get fluent in the calibration software stack and understand how it maps to superconducting hardware.
* Lead your first cooldown and characterization run, from resonator spectroscopy to single-qubit randomized benchmarking.
* Sit with customers and partners to see where the platform breaks down for them. Pick the friction point that annoys you most.
### 60 days
* Own a qubit bring-up cycle end to end, from packaging to two-qubit gates.
* Ship your first contribution to the automated calibration routines. Start with spectroscopy, readout optimization, or two-qubit gate tuning.
* Fix the friction point you found in your first month, and propose the highest leverage things the team can do in superconducting qubits.
### 90 days
* Have at least one calibration improvement in production that has moved a key metric. Coherence, readout fidelity, and time to a calibrated device are examples of what we track.
* Lead superconducting operations at Conductor.
* Drive the control and calibration roadmap, including which systems we bring onto the platform next.
## The team
We are a small, passionate founding team of quantum physicists, hardware engineers, and machine learning experts. Our founders, Brandon and Joel, met each other at Oxford during their PhDs working on AI for quantum computing. There they saw first-hand that calibration and control is a core bottleneck to scaling quantum computers.
This is your opportunity to do the best work of your life as part of that founding team.
## Who we are looking for
High intelligence, high energy, and high integrity. Obsessive about where the error budget goes. Relish the challenge and physical chaos of a scaling hardware lab. People who are hungry to change the world and do not need to be told what to do next.
## Perks
* Free healthcare, dental, and vision
* Work on the most important technical problem of our generation
