Senior Software Engineer - Test Infrastructure

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: 1791

The Role: 

We are looking for a Software Engineer - Test Infrastructure to join our Release 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 own the quality signal for the integrated software that runs IonQ’s quantum computers. You will design and operate the automated testing that validates complete systems — from customer-scale circuit execution to the tools used to operate and calibrate the machines — on shared test environments that are themselves real quantum computing systems. You will build the CI infrastructure that catches integration problems early, set system-level test strategy, and manage the test system fleet that makes all of this possible, partnering daily with software, hardware, and physics teams.

The ideal candidate is a curious, collaborative engineer who is drawn to hardware-software integration testing, thinks in terms of coverage and infrastructure rather than individual test cases, and is comfortable defining the right test signal for first-of-their-kind systems.

Responsibilities:

• Own end-to-end integration testing of our system software: design, develop, and maintain the automated test suites that validate complete quantum computing systems on shared test environments, including circuit execution under realistic customer workloads.
• Extend automated test coverage of operator-facing tooling and workflows, exercising the interfaces engineers and physicists use to operate and calibrate systems.
• Design, build, and operate the CI infrastructure that catches integration bugs before software is deployed onto systems, in partnership with software development teams — and keep it fast, reliable, and trusted.
• Define and evolve system-level test strategy: identify coverage gaps beyond functional job execution and build the tests and instrumentation to close them, including performance characterization and electronics-control validation where appropriate.
• Own integration-test triage and reporting: drive failures to root cause, attribute regressions to the responsible component, and deliver specific, actionable feedback to owning teams.
• Manage the lifecycle of the test system fleet across IonQ product lines: establish consistent hardware and software baselines across instances, coordinate upgrades and decommissioning with the product teams that define their requirements, and maintain an authoritative record of each system’s configuration and fitness for purpose.
• Champion testability across component teams, promoting the interfaces, test hooks, and practices that make our system software easier to validate.

Requirements:

• 5+ years of professional experience in test infrastructure, software test automation, CI engineering, or a closely related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python or another general-purpose language, with experience creating test frameworks and automation tooling, not just using them.
• Hands-on background designing, operating, and scaling CI/CD systems that engineering teams depend on.
• Experience implementing system-level integration tests for complex, multi-component systems.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop or lab-based test environments, or demonstrated aptitude for working close to physical hardware.
• Excellent debugging skills, particularly across the boundary between software and hardware.
• Strong collaboration skills; this role works closely with engineers on multiple product teams.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with performance testing methodology and workload characterization.
• Experience instrumenting and validating electronic control systems (e.g., capturing and asserting on signal output via oscilloscope or equivalent instrumentation).
• Experience managing test health at scale — flaky-test management, test observability, or quality metrics and dashboards.
• Familiarity with containerization and infrastructure-as-code for building reproducible test environments.
• Background in scientific or research computing environments.

The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.