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.
Location: This role is based out of our Denver, CO office. We offer a hybrid work model, allowing for remote work a few days per week.
Travel: Up to 25%
Job ID: 1643
The Role:
We are looking for a Senior Staff DevOps Engineer to join our Quantum Platform Network Security Engineering Team. You'll be part of a cross-functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build the world's best quantum computers to solve the world's most complex problems.
In this role, you will be responsible for leading CI/CD pipeline strategy, deployment automation architecture, release management, and GitOps practices. This role owns the pipeline platform — shared libraries, templates, standards, and tooling — that enables all application teams and infrastructure services to build and deploy through self-service, while collaborating closely with Architecture on IaC standards and with SRE on deployment reliability.
The Senior Staff DevOps Engineer is a co-owner of pipeline security and infrastructure security, overseeing responsibility for vulnerability management, artifact scanning, SAST, DAST, and SBOM generation within the CI/CD ecosystem, working jointly with the Senior Cloud Security Engineer on vulnerability program governance and with the Security Operations Engineer on scanning execution.
As the primary owner of cross-service release coordination you will be working with Security to enforce vulnerability gates and risk assessments as part of every release cycle. The Senior Staff DevOps Engineer continuously implements AI Ops practices, leveraging AWS Agent Core to design and deploy agentic workflows that automate repetitive pipeline operations, intelligent dependency management, and infrastructure provisioning tasks.
The ideal candidate is someone who is a hands-on technical expert who writes pipeline code, builds and debugs deployment automation, develops IaC modules, configures and operates security scanning tooling within pipelines, and operates release tooling daily — driving success through execution, not delegation alone.
Responsibilities:
- Own the CI/CD pipeline platform: design, build, and maintain shared pipeline libraries, reusable templates, and standards that enable application teams to configure their own pipeline instances via self-service.
- Maintain infrastructure-specific pipelines directly.
- Define and implement deployment strategies (blue-green, canary, rolling, feature flags) that minimize deployment risk and enable rapid rollback.
- Own end-to-end release management for infrastructure and product services: define versioning strategies, coordinate cross-service releases, manage release trains, and make release go/no-go decisions in partnership with Security (vulnerability gate) and SRE (reliability readiness).
- Ensure every release cycle includes a risk assessment checkpoint: vulnerability scan results reviewed, dependency risk evaluated, compliance posture confirmed, and rollback plan validated before production promotion.
- Establish and maintain GitOps practices using declarative infrastructure and application definitions stored in version control as the single source of truth.
- Develop, test, and maintain IaC modules (OpenTofu modules, Terragrunt configurations, Packer templates, Ansible playbooks, Helm charts, Kustomize overlays) following patterns defined by Architecture.
- Build and maintain self-service developer portals, environment provisioning tools, and internal developer platforms that enable developers to trigger deployments and provision environments without DevOps intervention.
- Track and report on DORA metrics (deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR) and SDLC health indicators using Jira for sprint velocity, backlog health, and cross-team dependency tracking; identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement.
- Design, build, and operate agentic workflows using AWS Agent Core to automate repetitive DevOps tasks including pipeline failure triage, dependency update orchestration, environment provisioning, release coordination, and intelligent deployment decision-making.
- Continuously identify candidates for agentic automation across daily operations.
- Instrument deployments with observability, configure SLO monitoring for pipelines, implement canary analysis and automated rollback, and participate in incident response.
Requirements:
- 5 years of hands-on expertise in Pipeline Orchestration (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) and advanced Git workflows, including experience utilizing GitHub Actions OIDC and Workload Identity Federation.
- 5 years of practical application in Scripting Languages (Python, Bash, Go).
- 4 years of direct experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible).
- 4 years of demonstrated background in Containerization (Docker, Buildah) and Kubernetes deployment/operations (EKS, Kyverno, Bottlerocket), alongside a proven track record with GitOps practices (Flux, Helm) and artifact management (Artifactory, Nexus, ECR/ACR/GAR).
- Technical proficiency integrating pipeline security scanning (SAST, DAST, SCA), container scanning, and IaC validation/testing (Trivy, native OpenTofu test frameworks).
- Established background implementing AI Ops and Agentic Frameworks, including AWS Agent Core and LLM-based automation.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- Kubernetes administrator or developer certification (CKA/CKAD).
- Experience supporting Event Streaming Platforms (MSK/Kafka, IAM auth, TLS).
- Experience with internal developer platforms (Backstage, Port).
- Background in platform engineering at scale (100+ developers).
- Experience with multi-environment promotion strategies.
- Experience with SBOM generation (Syft, CycloneDX), Cosign artifact signing, and supply chain security.
- DevSecOps pipeline design and vulnerability management at scale.
- Experience with AI Ops, intelligent automation, or agentic AI frameworks for operational tasks.
- Experience with AWS Agent Core or equivalent agentic orchestration platforms.
The approximate base salary range for this position is $167,808 - $219,704. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.
Compensation will vary based on individual factors such as education, qualifications, and experience of the final candidate(s), specific office location, and calibration against relevant market data and internal team equity. Posted base salary figures are subject to change as new market data becomes available. Our benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, matching 401K, unlimited PTO and paid holidays, parental/adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided when a candidate receives an offer of employment.
At IonQ, we believe in fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all while striving to identify and eliminate barriers. We empower employees to thrive by fostering a culture of autonomy, productivity, and respect. We are dedicated to creating an environment where individuals can feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.
We are committed to equity and justice. We welcome different voices and viewpoints and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.
US Technical Jobs. The position you are applying for will require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control and government contract restrictions. Employment with IonQ is contingent on either verifying “U.S. Person” (e.g., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum) status for export controls and government contracts work, obtaining any necessary license, and/or confirming the availability of a license exception under U.S. export controls. Please note that in the absence of confirming you are a U.S. Person for export control and government contracts work purposes, IonQ may choose not to apply for a license or decline to use a license exception (if available) for you to access export-controlled technology that may require authorization, and similarly, you may not qualify for government contracts work that requires U.S. Persons, and IonQ may decline to proceed with your application on those bases alone. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.
US Non-Technical Jobs. Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.
If you are interested in being a part of our team and mission, we encourage you to apply!
Skills Required
- 5 years of hands-on expertise in Pipeline Orchestration
- 5 years of practical application in Scripting Languages (Python, Bash, Go)
- 4 years of direct experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible)
- 4 years of demonstrated background in Containerization (Docker, Buildah) and Kubernetes deployment
- Technical proficiency integrating pipeline security scanning (SAST, DAST)
IonQ Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about IonQ and has not been reviewed or approved by IonQ.
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Healthcare Strength — Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage is described alongside HSA/FSA options, disability and life insurance, and mental health support. Inclusive elements such as transgender health benefits are also part of the package.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid maternity, paternity, and bonding leave is described as fully paid for eligible employees. Additional leave types such as bereavement leave are also included in time-off provisions.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) plan with company matching up to 5% is included as part of the core package. Vesting is noted as applying over time, indicating the match is structured as a longer-term retention benefit.
IonQ Insights
What We Do
Quantum computers are a revolutionizing technology — they have the potential to transform business, society, and the planet for the better, and IonQ is at the forefront of this revolution. After over 25 years of academic research, IonQ was founded in 2015 by Chris Monroe and Jungsang Kim with $2 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates, a license to core technology from the University of Maryland and Duke University, and the goal of taking trapped ion quantum computing out of the lab and into the market. In the following three years, we raised an additional $20 million from GV, Amazon Web Services, and NEA, and built two of the world’s most accurate quantum computers. In 2019, we raised another $55 million in a round led by Samsung and Mubadala, and announced partnerships with Microsoft and Amazon Web Services to make our quantum computers available via the cloud. In 2020 and 2021, we built additional generations of high performance quantum hardware, added Google Cloud Marketplace to our cloud partner roster and announced a series of collaborations and business partnerships with leading academic and commercial institutions. On October 1st, 2021, IonQ began trading as IONQ on the New York Stock Exchange, making it the world's first public pure-play quantum computing company. We remain hard at work realizing the world-changing potential of quantum computing.
Why Work With Us
We’re growing a passionate, diverse team of collaborative, creative people. We believe in pursuing innovative, challenging work with integrity, alongside team members we can learn from and grow with.
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