Staff Backend Software Engineer, Cloud Platform

IonQ•Bothell, WA

About The Position

IonQ is seeking a Staff Backend Software Engineer to help build the IonQ Cloud Platform, which connects customers to IonQ quantum computers through APIs, tools, and partner clouds such as AWS, GCP, and Azure. Working with product, applications, systems, infrastructure, operations, and scientific teams, you will develop platform components that provide customers and partners with a strong quantum developer experience. The platform processes quantum jobs by breaking them down, compiling and queuing them, running them on hardware, and returning results. The team works at a fast pace, with requirements that evolve alongside the hardware, compiler, and jobs. A quantum computing background is not required, but curiosity, humility, and willingness to learn are important. Reporting to the Senior Manager of Cloud Engineering, you will help deliver highly available, fault-tolerant cloud services and contribute to the asynchronous job-processing pipeline. You will define API contracts with backend teams and carry them from design through implementation and release. In addition to developing roadmap features, you will help maintain platform health by improving testing, observability, continuous delivery, stability, and security, and by participating in on-call rotations and incident reviews. You will also integrate AI capabilities to improve customer experiences, responsibly use AI-assisted development tools, mentor engineers, and promote technical alignment across teams.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent training, fellowship, or work experience.
7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
Strong experience with large-scale cloud service platforms and designing scalable, robust services.
Programming experience in languages such as Go, TypeScript, or Python.
Experience with databases such as PostgreSQL.
Experience in a cloud-native environment such as AWS, GCP, or Azure, with Kubernetes or serverless.
Ability to design and implement critical application components, including UX, APIs and services, exception handling, data access, and security.
Experience with automated testing, production troubleshooting, and observability.
Practical experience with AI-assisted engineering tools, including validating generated code for correctness and security.
Track record of leading projects in cross-functional teams.
Strong written and spoken communication and collaboration skills.

Nice To Haves

10+ years of professional full-stack software development experience.
3+ years of experience working with Kubernetes.
3+ years of experience with NoSQL and SQL databases.
Experience with OAuth-, OpenID-, or SAML-based authentication.
Prior experience developing on Google Cloud Platform, ideally on a cloud platform team at a major provider.
Experience building job-processing pipelines for large, complex workloads such as quantum, AI, or video analytics jobs.

Responsibilities

Lead the design and implementation of software experiences for quantum novices and experts.
Define API contracts with backend teams and improve testing, observability, and continuous delivery practices.
Contribute to the job-processing pipeline, including pre-processing, asynchronous execution, post-processing, and returning results.
Develop new platform features and help maintain highly available, fault-tolerant cloud services.
Improve platform stability and security, and participate in on-call rotations and incident reviews.
Integrate AI capabilities that improve customer experiences and use AI-assisted development tools responsibly.
Mentor engineers and drive technical alignment across teams.