QPU Production Test Development Manager

IonQ•College Park, MD

22h

About The Position

IonQ is seeking a QPU Production Test Development Manager to lead the engineers and technicians who validate new QPU designs and verify that manufactured QPUs meet agreed performance and acceptance criteria. The role owns test strategy, laboratory capability, and test campaign execution, collaborating with design, science, engineering, and manufacturing teams. It is part of Device Operations, alongside fabrication, packaging, and quality. As QPU production scales through foundry and packaging partners, the manager will define test standards and QPU certification criteria and ensure partners follow them as test functions transfer along the product roadmap. The manager owns the test roadmap, team priorities, laboratory readiness, and the quality of data used for QPU decisions. The role translates requirements into repeatable test plans and clear acceptance criteria, coordinates work across multiple sites, and guides complex hardware investigations while developing engineers and improving test throughput. The team is expected to grow to around four people in the first year. The role works closely with the design team in Oxford and fabrication partners in Minnesota.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, physics, applied physics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Significant experience testing complex hardware or experimental systems.
Experience owning test plans, measurement methods, and technical results.
Strong experimental troubleshooting skills and a sound understanding of measurement uncertainty, repeatability, and data analysis.
Experience leading engineers or technical laboratory teams, both as a people manager and as the technical lead of cross-functional test programs, and prioritizing work across multiple test activities.
Experience developing or overseeing test automation, preferably using Python.
Ability to work across hardware, software, science, and manufacturing disciplines and communicate technical conclusions clearly.

Nice To Haves

Experience testing or operating trapped ion systems, quantum hardware, precision optical systems, or other complex physics-based instruments.
Experience with optics and lasers, vacuum systems, cryogenic systems, electronics, control systems, or device packaging.
Experience electrically testing and characterizing devices at die and package level, including at cryogenic temperatures.
Experience building test capability for new product introduction and transferring methods into a repeatable manufacturing workflow.
Experience working in a startup or scale-up environment.

Responsibilities

Lead, coach, and grow a team of test engineers and technicians; set priorities, provide technical guidance, and develop effective laboratory practices.
Own QPU test strategy from design validation through manufacturing verification, at die and package level, including test coverage, procedures, common pass/fail criteria, and a standard report format used consistently across sites and test stations.
Plan and coordinate parallel test campaigns across labs at multiple sites, balancing QPU availability, laboratory capacity, equipment budget, vendor lead times, and program milestones.
Establish reliable test infrastructure and automated workflows; oversee equipment qualification, calibration, and maintenance; and track coverage, repeatability, cycle time, data quality, and traceability.
Lead structured root cause analysis of ambiguous results and QPU failures with design, science, packaging, fabrication, and external partners.
Present results, risks, and recommendations to support design changes, QPU selection, and release decisions.