Senior Systems and Network Engineer

IonQ•College Park, MD

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

IonQ is building quantum computers and requires a robust classical infrastructure to support this work. A Senior Systems and Network Engineer is needed to manage the classical infrastructure layer critical for quantum hardware builds and operations at the College Park site. This involves provisioning servers, building and maintaining lab and datacenter networks, and integrating specialized scientific hardware. The role is hands-on, focusing on lab-grade systems and network engineering with a strong emphasis on automation for scalability. This position is closer to research computing at a national facility than to corporate IT, requiring direct interaction with hardware, cabling, and troubleshooting complex failure modes.

Requirements

6+ years of experience in systems, network, or infrastructure engineering with hands-on server provisioning.
Hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting switches, firewalls, routers, and on-prem servers in a production environment.
Direct experience configuring VLANs and managed-switch environments, including self-sufficient network problem diagnosis and resolution.
Experience building or rebuilding a provisioning workflow using infrastructure-as-code or automation tooling (Ansible, Salt, Kickstart, Foreman, Cobbler, Packer, or equivalent).
Experience integrating non-standard or custom hardware into a compute environment (e.g., scientific instruments, specialist peripherals, devices with custom drivers).
Working knowledge of IPMI/BMC and out-of-band server management.
Strong scripting ability in Python, Go, or an equivalent language.
Comfort operating in an environment where infrastructure failure directly blocks work and playbooks for new hardware generations are still being developed.

Nice To Haves

Experience at a company running significant on-prem compute infrastructure at scale (bare-metal cloud, colocation, high-density compute).
Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration in a bare-metal or hybrid environment.
Experience with configuration drift detection and enforcement, and ability to describe how idempotency was verified in a provisioning pipeline.
Familiarity with cloud networking (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid on-prem/cloud environments.
Experience in a research, national lab, or scientific compute environment.
Prior exposure to quantum computing or another deep-tech hardware domain.

Responsibilities

Provision Linux servers and system heads for quantum hardware builds, including PXE boot, OS installation, and automated configuration.
Build and maintain infrastructure-as-code for server and network provisioning (Ansible, Kickstart, Foreman, Packer, Terraform, or equivalent) to ensure reproducible systems.
Design, configure, and troubleshoot networking for lab and datacenter environments, including VLANs, managed switches, firewalls, and structured cabling.
Integrate non-standard scientific and lab hardware into the compute environment, such as cameras, laser control systems, and custom device drivers.
Use IPMI/BMC and other out-of-band tooling to manage a growing fleet of servers without physical intervention for every failure.
Define and document handoff criteria for systems ready for experimental teams.
Diagnose and resolve infrastructure issues that are actively blocking hardware builds or experimental runs with appropriate urgency.
Partner with software, DevOps, and hardware engineering teams to understand new system requirements.
Write runbooks and documentation to centralize provisioning knowledge in a repository.