Director, Systems Software

Location: Oxford, England, United Kingdom
Travel: As Needed
Job ID: 1805

The Role:

We’re looking for an enthusiastic and highly technical Director, Systems Software who will thrive in our dynamic cross-disciplinary environment. You’d be working closely with our skilled software engineers and our world-leading quantum scientists to plan and manage the development of software that powers our quantum computers.

You will initially be leading a software team of around twenty software engineers with future growth of the team expected. We develop a full stack solution ranging from the real-time control & monitoring of our systems through an IR and quantum compiler layer to application demonstration. Your role will be critical in both specifying the stack as components that can be individually developed and released, and growing the team into a world-class organisation capable of developing and supporting the stack for internal and external customers. A critical part of this will be to establish and drive suitable development, devops, release, and 3rd line support processes.

The quantum core of our hardware is built from trapped-ion qubits, controlled by devices designed and made by a partner tier 1 fab. We control the ions using electrical signals and laser light, driven by real-time FPGA systems and networked equipment. The required sequences and operations are derived both by low-level experiments that our science teams produce, and by a compilation flow from quantum algorithms. Our software stack is a combination of Python and Rust.

We are looking for an experienced full-stack software manager, previous exposure to quantum systems is not required.

Responsibilities:

In this position, you’ll have the opportunity to accelerate the delivery of our software projects, contributing directly to the success of our research and development roadmap.

A focus in this role will be leading the definition and evolution of any internal team processes and the devops processes as our stack matures. You will work collaboratively with other teams to develop stronger cross-team interfaces and processes.

Your key responsibilities can be split into two categories:

Product management

• Lead the software team and work with other technical teams to build and maintain long-term roadmaps for our various software projects
• Capture feature requests from internal conversations and external requirements
• Understand conflicting priorities and manage the team to deliver according to company needs and timescales
• Drive detailed software solutions, working with the software team
• Provide clear updates on issues and progress to all stakeholders
• Own the software team’s backlog, working with the team members and project management group to keep it up to date
• Be the first point of call for others in the company to understand how the software fits together at a high level

Team management

• Ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the software team and ensuring the team maintains the right balance of delivery speed and quality
• Support members of the software team, including looking out for their wellbeing
• Conducting the performance reviews for the team and supporting their career development at IonQ
• Work with the VP of Engineering to plan future growth of the software team

Requirements:

To be successful, you will need proven experience managing a software organisation containing tens of engineers and subject matter experts in their respective fields.You will have a track record in setting priorities, giving clear expectations and ensuring results are suitable for the internal and external customers, with a clear understanding of critical versus urgent items.

You’d be a great fit with:

• Proven ability to delegate at the appropriate level while maintaining good quality output at the pace needed in a high-tech startup
• Detailed technical background in more than one of the following areas: real time embedded software, compiler development, assembler development, graph algorithmic representations, system monitoring, data centre deployments.
• Clear understanding of standard software development processes and a pragmatic approach to their use in a growing organisation
• Excellent technical and organisational communication skills, both across the organisation and to external stakeholders

It would also be beneficial to have an understanding of branching and release practices and when to use them and/or how to organise internal triage and support as our external customer base grows. Additional desirable experience would be experience in tracking team delivery of new features, including scoping, estimation, release planning and tracking.