Senior Electrical Engineer

IonQ•College Park, MD

35d•Hybrid

About The Position

Our Control Electronics team designs every custom electronic assembly inside an IonQ quantum computer. The work is the control electronics that sit around the trap, and it is genuinely multidisciplinary: precision analogue, RF, mixed signal DAC and ADC design, FPGA and high speed logic layout, and the signal and power integrity that decide whether any of it works at the speeds we need. This is a board level design role, not silicon. You would split your time roughly evenly between design and simulation on one side and the bench on the other, because the team’s instinct is to build something physical and measure it rather than model it indefinitely. Some of what we are trying to make has to be better than we currently know how to measure it, which is the part most engineers find either alarming or irresistible.

Requirements

Real board level design experience with a substantial analogue component.
Ability to move between the time domain and the frequency domain without having to stop and think about it.
Comfortable in the lab, using test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes and spectrum analysers, and automating your own measurements.
A bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering or equivalent industry experience.

Nice To Haves

A background in scientific instrumentation, test and measurement, aerospace or defence electronics, or other demanding measurement, control or signal generation hardware.
A master’s degree in electrical engineering or a related discipline.
FPGA and high speed digital experience alongside the analogue core.
Experience at a company scaling quickly, where engineers wear several hats.
A habit of prototyping early, being straight about what failed, and fixing it.

Responsibilities

Own custom board designs from schematic capture and simulation through to a working prototype on the bench, characterising them with a wide range of test and measurement equipment, from oscilloscopes to spectrum analysers, and writing your own automated test scripts for evaluation.
Contribute to design reviews across the team’s other projects, and come up to speed quickly on how the separate assemblies fit together as one machine.
Respond sensibly to change rather than defending the original plan, as the product is being built to a schedule while its requirements are still moving.
Design custom board level assemblies covering precision analogue, RF, mixed signal DAC and ADC, FPGA and high speed logic layout, with the signal and power integrity to match.
Take designs from schematic capture and simulation to working, measured prototypes.
Characterise your hardware with oscilloscopes, spectrum analysers and your own automated test.
Contribute to design reviews across the team’s projects.
Work to a schedule while requirements are still moving.