Staff Engineer - Firmware

About Vector Atomic:

Vector Atomic, an IonQ company, is building quantum technology to transform navigation, timing, geophysical exploration, and telecommunications. Our team of engineers, scientists, software developers, and operations professionals works together to solve complex challenges and turn bold ideas into real-world solutions. We value collaboration, curiosity, and diverse perspectives, and we give every team member the opportunity to make an immediate impact while growing their skills. If you're excited to work on breakthrough technology in a fast-paced, hands-on environment, we'd love to hear from you.

As a Technical Lead for Real-Time Control Systems, you will provide the architectural vision and technical leadership necessary to build next-generation quantum instruments. You will be responsible for designing complex embedded systems on ARM SoC and ST Micro platforms, developing robust data acquisition pipelines, and implementing the control algorithms that drive precision sensing technology. This role sits at the intersection of hardware and software, requiring you to bridge the gap between physicists, electronics engineers, and firmware teams. Beyond writing production-quality code, you will serve as a mentor and strategist, driving coding standards, hardware bring-up strategies, and the continuous improvement of development infrastructure to ensure the scalability of quantum control frameworks.

About IonQ:

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world's leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ's newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership: Provide architectural direction for real-time control systems and lead technical discussions across hardware and firmware teams.
• System Architecture: Design system controllers on ARM SoC, including user-space drivers, libraries, and reusable frameworks for quantum system control.
• Software Development: Write high-performance, production-quality code in C/C++ and Rust, establishing team-wide best practices and coding standards.
• Control Theory & Implementation: Define and implement essential control algorithms, including robust control loops with reliable error handling for precision instruments.
• Hardware Collaboration: Lead board testing and hardware bring-up strategies in coordination with hardware engineers.
• Mentorship: Guide junior and senior engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and proactive technical coaching.
• Process Improvement: Drive the evolution of development processes, tooling, and infrastructure, including CI/CD and automated testing.
• Strategic Representation: Act as the primary technical voice for the team during cross-functional reviews and strategic planning sessions.

Location: This role is based onsite at our office in Pleasanton, CA.

Travel: Up to 5%