Senior Software Engineer, Control & Calibration

PsiQuantum • Palo Alto, CA

112d • $156,000 - $180,000

About The Position

The Control Software & OS Core Team at PsiQuantum works closely alongside engineers and scientists in the electronics, system architecture, and validation teams and is responsible for building the scalable, distributed, fault-tolerant control plane and operating system for utility scale photonic quantum computers. Our team is responsible for orchestration, scheduling, kernel architecture, co-design, calibration, validation, providing abstractions, systems, and operating software for the immense heterogenous fabric of co-processors, networks, and photonics that are critical to the success of our company’s goal of building the world’s first useful quantum computer. As a Senior Software Engineer, Calibration & Control you will design and implement the next generation of calibration algorithms, controls, and software that keep our quantum processors in spec 24×7x365.

Requirements

• 5+ years professional software engineering; 3+ years in feedback-control, calibration, robotics, or analogous real-time domains.
• Fluency in Python or Julia, particularly in the context of scientific computing, AI/ML, or signal processing.
• Fluency in Rust and/or C++17+; comfortable writing lock-free, wait-free, and numerically stable code paths.
• Proven track record delivering production systems with real-time or ultra-low-latency requirements.
• Hands-on experience interfacing with hardware over PCIe, Ethernet, or custom serial buses; confident reading schematics & timing diagrams.
• Working knowledge of Linux internals (irq, cgroups, NUMA, hugepages) and high-performance networking stacks.
• Strong foundation in one or more of: quantum information processing, artificial intelligence, robotics, control theory, optimization, signal processing, or experimental physics.
• B.S. in CS, EE, Physics, or related discipline (or equivalent practical experience).

Nice To Haves

• M.S./Ph.D. focused on numerical optimization, control systems, photonics, computer science, or quantum information.
• Demonstrated experience accelerating numerical Python workflows using Mojo, Jax, PyTorch, or similar.
• Experience with sub-nanosecond clock-sync protocols.
• Familiarity with FEC and/or QEC (forward error correction / quantum error correction) concepts, stabilizer circuits, fusion-based architectures, or tensor-network simulation.
• On-device ML for adaptive calibration (Gaussian processes, RL bandits).
• GPU / CUDA-accelerated numerical kernels (cuBLAS/cuFFT/cuQuantum) and/or GPU-Direct RDMA pipelines.
• Contributions to open-source control or scientific-computing projects.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement calibration and adaptive control software in Rust (no-std + async), C++20, and Python targeting x86, GPUs, DPUs, and embedded MCUs.
• Design closed-loop optimization algorithms (e.g., Bayesian, stochastic gradient descent, ADAM) that maximize system performance and stability under drift and environmental noise.
• Integrate with high-speed fabrics: libfabric, RDMA (RoCEv2/GDR), and FPGA PCIe DMA endpoints.
• Build scalable simulation/emulation harnesses (Python, Rust, cuQuantum) to de-risk algorithms before system bring-up.
• Implement hooks for observability metrics, traces, SLOs and partner with sibling teams to integrate into our observability infrastructure.
• Collaborate daily with physics, validation, firmware, and FPGA teams to co-design HW/SW interfaces and define calibration priorities.
• Conduct rigorous code reviews, design reviews, and root-cause analyses; uphold our bar for deterministic, safety-critical code.

Benefits

• Equity and benefits eligibility for full-time roles.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees