Senior Software Engineer, Back-end (Boulder Opal)

About the team

At Q-CTRL, Quantum Computing Engineering is a global team of software engineers and infrastructure experts,combining deep technical expertise with a startup mindset to deliver real impact through software innovation. Our work is underpinned by robust standards, and by embracing the three virtues. Our team excels in areas across back-end, front-end, machine learning, and platform engineering.

We transform Q-CTRL’s world-leading technological breakthroughs into commercial software products with applications across defense, research, and industry. We work closely with Product, Design, and Research teams to accelerate the path to quantum advantage worldwide.

What you'll be doing

• Build impactful systems: Design, develop, and optimize scalable backend applications in Python that power real-world quantum technology.
• Engineer for performance: Create high-efficiency service-to-service communication using modern protocols.
• Bridge science and engineering: Work hand-in-hand with researchers to translate cutting-edge research code into production-ready solutions, while sharing engineering best practices.
• Deliver end-to-end solutions: Partner with product, frontend, and infrastructure teams to ship integrated features used across Q-CTRL’s products.
• Shape reusable architectures: Develop product features that promote flexibility, reuse, and scalability across multiple business cases.
• Other duties within the Employee's skills and experience, or with reasonable training.

Ideally you'll have

• 5+ years of backend engineering experience with Python, Rust, C++, or similar.
• A track record of collaborating across research and engineering to solve hard technical challenges.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a proactive, ownership-driven mindset.
• Experience designing and implementing efficient algorithms, statistical models, or large-scale data pipelines.

Bonus points (not essential, but exciting if you bring them!)

• Hands-on experience with modern APIs (gRPC, GraphQL, REST).
• Exposure to cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) and infrastructure management.
• Familiarity with Python web frameworks like Django, Flask, or FastAPI.
• Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, CircleCI) and container orchestration tools like Kubernetes.
• Hands-on experience in observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Tempo, AWS CloudWatch) for monitoring metrics, traces, and logs.
• Exposure in data orchestration and warehousing (e.g., Airflow, Snowflake, dbt, or comparable platforms)