Senior Photonics Scientist (Quantum Computing)

Location: On-site in Broomfield, Colorado, United States. Candidates must be U.S. Persons and must not be nationals of China or Russia unless also U.S. citizens.

Company

hirify.global develops trapped-ion quantum computing systems and the optics and integrated photonics technologies required to scale them.

What you will do

• Guide technical milestones, strategic planning, and collaboration on integrated photonics for trapped-ion quantum computing.
• Develop and demonstrate optical metrology testbeds for passive and active photonic materials, devices, systems, and architectures.
• Lead design trade studies, technical analyses, and optical metrology data collection to inform Apollo and Lumos system architecture and photonics design.
• Coordinate schedules, budgets, resource allocations, work plans, and R&D handoff to production teams.
• Collaborate with photonics, optical, mechanical, and atomic physics specialists, as well as internal and external fabrication partners.
• Communicate technical results, risks, scope changes, strategy, and progress to technical teams, project management, leadership, and external partners.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent technical background.
• At least 8 years of experience, degree inclusive, with experimental free-space optics and/or integrated photonics.
• U.S. Person status is required: U.S. citizenship, permanent residence, or asylum/refugee status.
• Due to U.S. Government national security requirements, Chinese or Russian nationals must also be U.S. citizens.
• Strong written and verbal communication, organization, and collaboration skills.
• Ability to facilitate communication among specialists with diverse technical backgrounds, including remote colleagues.

Nice to have

• PhD in physics or engineering and experience directing technical projects or leading technical teams.
• Experience with photonic integrated circuit testing, optical metrology, on-chip photonics, fiber-to-chip coupling, and modulation techniques.
• Experience with nanophotonic simulation tools such as FDTD, FEM, Lumerical, COMSOL, RCWA, or RSoft.
• Experience with micro- and nano-fabrication, cleanroom practices, electron-beam or photolithography, etching, microscopy, and wafer handling.
• Scientific coding, data analysis and visualization, hardware control, and automation using tools such as Python, MATLAB, Mathematica, Origin, or Igor.

Culture & Benefits

• Cross-disciplinary collaboration across photonics, optics, mechanics, atomic physics, fabrication, project management, and leadership.
• Work on quantum computing systems progressing from current 98-qubit technology toward future million-qubit systems.
• Safety-sensitive placement requires a pre-employment drug test.