Senior Staff SDN Control Plane Lead - Quantum Networking

Senior Staff SDN Control Plane Lead - Quantum Networking at IonQ We are looking for a Senior Staff SDN Control Plane Lead. As a technical leader, you will design the "brain" of the quantum network—a centralized controller capable of managing high-fidelity entanglement resources in real-time. You will leverage your experience with large-scale network topologies and advanced scheduling to solve unprecedented problems in path-calculation and resource reservation for quantum systems. Responsibilities: Lead the design of the centralized software-defined network controller, maintaining a real-time global view of network telemetry, topology and available resources. Architect the network orchestrator to handle time-dependent entanglement resource requests using advanced scheduling algorithms. Develop path-calculation logic to consider loss budgets and delays across the quantum network. Implement conflict prevention to ensure reservations do not collide on the same devices or links. Engineer the control plane to support automated hardware configuration and state recovery.. You’d be a good fit with: Minimum 8+ years of experience in network engineering or distributed systems, with significant time spent leading the architecture of SDN controllers or complex resource schedulers. Minimum of a Master’s in Computer Science, Networking, or a related field. Expertise in designing centralized control planes for high-availability systems with strict performance constraints. Proficiency in C/C++. Go, or Rust for performance-critical processes. You’d be a great fit with: Expertise in SDN Control Plane architectures. Deep knowledge of optical network control planes and the management of physical-layer metrics (e.g., signal-to-noise ratio or loss budgets) within a software layer. Experience designing networking or high-performance systems where timing resolution and latency budgets are mission-critical. Proven ability to build global topology managers that handle dynamic resource availability and complex hardware constraints in real-time. Location: Vista, Bothell Travel: 10% The approximate base salary range for this position is $194,852 - $255,112. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, and equity.