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 at our Santa Clara, CA office, with the option to work a few days a week remotely.
Travel: Up to 25%
Job ID: 1861
The Role:
We are looking for a Staff DevOps Engineer to join our Quantum Platform Network Security Engineering Team. The Platform Engineering team builds, secures, and operates scalable infrastructure for cloud-managed SaaS products with on-premises components deployed at customer sites.
The DevOps discipline owns the "software factory" — the end-to-end system that takes code from commit to production securely, reliably, and fast, with security embedded into every stage.
As a Staff DevOps Engineer, you set the technical direction for the software factory. You own its roadmap, make the architecture and tooling decisions that shape how every product team ships, and raise the bar through standards, review, and mentorship. You remain deeply hands-on by writing pipeline code, building and testing infrastructure-as-code modules, configuring security scanning, managing dependencies, operating release infrastructure, and, where on-premises infrastructure is in scope, running physical and virtual systems. The work is automation-first with every repetitive task a candidate for a pipeline or an agentic workflow.
- CI/CD pipeline platform — the shared build, test, scan, sign, and deploy platform, with reusable templates and golden-path standards.
- Pipeline security and policy — scanning strategy, security gates, risk thresholds, and automated go/no-go decisioning.
- Release engineering and governance — the release train (versioning, environment promotion), the release gate with risk assessment, and an expedited, still-gated hotfix pipeline for emergency production changes.
- Dependency management and supply-chain security — dependency health, Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, artifact signing, and provenance.
- Internal developer platform — self-service environment provisioning, onboarding, documentation, and the developer support model.
- Infrastructure as Code — reusable, tested modules, policy-as-code enforcement, and environment consistency across cloud and hybrid deployments.
- Security operations and compliance — vulnerability scanning, continuous compliance evidence, identity and access operations, and secrets lifecycle management.
- On-premises and hybrid operations — operational consistency between cloud and on-premises systems, where applicable.
- Agentic automation and AI security — agentic automation across the software factory, with guardrails and security controls for autonomous actions.
Responsibilities:
- Set the direction — own the software-factory roadmap and the architecture and tooling decisions behind it, and bring the organization along with you, so that every service builds, tests, scans, signs, and deploys through self-service, with no manual gates beyond code review and release approval.
- Make security the fast path — embed scanning and policy enforcement into every pipeline stage so secure delivery is the default, not a bottleneck.
- Run release management — operate the release train (versioning, environment promotion) and the release gate, and the expedited hotfix pipeline fast but fully gated.
- Keep dependencies and the supply chain healthy — automate dependency updates, track freshness, generate SBOMs, and verify artifact provenance.
- Build and improve the internal developer platform — deliver self-service capabilities that let product teams ship quickly and safely.
- Engineer infrastructure as code — write and test production modules with the same rigor product teams apply to application code.
- Operate security and compliance — run vulnerability scanning, drive findings to closure within security-based service-level targets and keep audit evidence continuously current.
- Automate with agents — build and operate agentic workflows for pipeline triage, dependency orchestration, and routine support, and enforce guardrails for autonomous actions.
- Scale the team and broaden impact — mentor engineers at different seniority levels, raise the bar through standards, review, and golden paths, and align Architecture, SRE, Cloud Operations, and Product Development behind the roadmap.
Requirements:
- 8+ years of production engineering experience with recent hands-on work.
- Hands-on, recent experience building and operating CI/CD pipeline platforms at production scale.
- Security embedded into pipelines as a practitioner — has personally configured scanning and driven a real vulnerability to closure within a deadline.
- Infrastructure-as-Code authored and tested, with production modules to show, not only consumed.
- Demonstrated ownership of release, dependency, or vulnerability-management outcomes with measurable results.
- Scripting and automation fluency, with a clear bias toward removing manual toil.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Supply-chain security depth (signing, SBOMs, provenance, SLSA).
- Internal developer platform or self-service design, measured by adoption.
- Release-gate or release-train ownership, including expedited or emergency-change delivery under pressure.
- Agentic delivery automation (AWS Agent Core or equivalent) and AI or LLM security practice.
The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.
If this role has a commission structure, the compensation range below just reflects the base compensation range.
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 401(k), 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
- 8+ years of production engineering experience with recent hands-on work
- Recent hands-on experience building and operating CI/CD pipeline platforms at production scale
- Practical experience embedding security into pipelines, configuring scanning, and driving vulnerabilities to closure
- Authored and tested Infrastructure-as-Code production modules
- Ownership of release, dependency, or vulnerability-management outcomes with measurable results
- Scripting and automation fluency with a focus on eliminating manual toil
- Supply-chain security experience including signing, SBOMs, provenance, or SLSA
- Internal developer platform or self-service design experience measured by adoption
- Release-gate or release-train ownership, including expedited emergency-change delivery
- Agentic delivery automation, AWS Agent Core or equivalent, and AI or LLM security practice
- Ability to satisfy U.S. person or applicable export-control authorization requirements
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 — Health coverage is described as comprehensive, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, HSA options, and no-cost mental-health support. Company materials also cite strong premium coverage levels for employees and dependents in recent years.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid maternity, paternity, and bonding leave are presented as fully paid for eligible employees. This breadth of family support is emphasized across company and job materials.
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Retirement Support — A 401(k) with company match up to 5% is part of the package, with materials noting a relatively short vesting schedule. Retirement support is positioned as a core element of total rewards.
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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