Senior Software Engineer - Release

Location: This role is based out of our College Park, Boulder, CO, or Bothell, WA offices. We offer a hybrid work model, allowing for remote work a few days per week.

Travel: Up to 10%, domestic or international.

Job ID: 1790

The Role:

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Release Engineering. As a Senior Software Engineer, 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 defining and automating the end-to-end software release process for our quantum computing systems — including how individually built software and firmware components come together into an integrated, deployable release. You will also establish the standards and interfaces that govern how component teams contribute their artifacts to that release, and build the foundational release infrastructure that will support multiple generations of our cutting-edge quantum operating system across product lines. The ideal candidate is a systems-minded engineer who is energized by bringing clarity and rigor to complex multi-team release processes and who can both define standards and implement them in code.

Responsibilities:

Define and automate the end-to-end release process: assembling individually built software and firmware components into a versioned, integrated release, and promoting it through defined release stages with explicit entry criteria at each stage.

Define and publish the standards that govern how component teams version, package, and qualify their artifacts for inclusion in the integrated release.

Evolve the software release process from its current semi-automated state into a push-button workflow, reducing release time to improve developer efficiency.

Establish a comprehensive release manifest mechanism to ensure that system components and versions are authoritatively documented and queryable.

Design and implement the underlying release infrastructure that supports multiple generations of our quantum operating system across product lines.

Partner with component teams to bring their artifacts into a coherent, auditable, end-to-end release model.

Support customer system builds through automated release deployment and ongoing troubleshooting support.

Requirements:

8+ years of professional experience in release engineering, build engineering, or a closely related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Demonstrated hands-on ownership of release automation, artifact management, and version control strategy in a multi-team environment.

Experience with artifact repositories and promotion workflows (Artifactory, GitHub Packages, or equivalent).

Strong CI/CD experience and comfort designing, building, and maintaining release pipelines.

Demonstrated ability to define standards and drive their adoption across multiple component teams.

Excellent written communication skills; this role involves significant documentation and cross-team alignment on what “release” means.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience releasing software for specialized hardware platforms or scientific instruments.

Experience supporting multiple product variants or product generations from a shared codebase or shared release infrastructure.

Familiarity with FPGA firmware versioning as a first-class element of a broader software release.

Background working with private artifact repositories and the establishment of new publishing workflows.

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.

Wage Transparency:

$145,920—$209,241 USD