Senior Systems and Network Engineer

IonQ is building quantum computers at College Park, and the infrastructure underneath that work is a crucial component. A misconfigured VLAN or a failed provisioning job can stop a calibration run or delay a system build.

We are looking for a Senior Systems and Network Engineer to own the classical infrastructure layer that directly supports quantum hardware builds and operation at our College Park site. This means provisioning the servers and system heads that control quantum hardware, building and maintaining the lab and datacenter networking those systems run on, and integrating the cameras, laser control systems, and other bespoke scientific hardware that make a quantum system work.

This is lab-grade systems and network engineering: closer to research computing at a national facility than to corporate IT. You will spend your time with real hardware, real cabling, and real failure modes, and automation of infrastructure to help us continue to scale.

Responsibilities:

• Rack, cable, and bring up servers, switches, and firewalls yourself, and keep an accurate as-built record of what is installed against the equipment list and network map.
• Provision Linux servers and system heads for quantum hardware builds, including PXE boot, OS installation, and automated configuration
• Build and maintain infrastructure-as-code for server and network provisioning (Ansible, Kickstart, Foreman, Packer, Terraform, or equivalent), so systems are reproducible rather than hand-tuned
• Design, configure, and troubleshoot networking for lab and datacenter environments: VLANs, managed switches, firewalls, and structured cabling
• Integrate non-standard scientific and lab hardware into the compute environment, including cameras, laser control systems, and custom device drivers
• Use IPMI/BMC and other out-of-band tooling to manage a growing fleet of servers without physical intervention on every failure
• Define and document handoff criteria for when a system is ready to pass to the teams running experiments on it
• Diagnose and resolve infrastructure issues that are actively blocking a hardware build or an experimental run, and treat that urgency accordingly
• Partner with software, DevOps, and hardware engineering teams to understand what a new system needs before it arrives
• Write runbooks and documentation so that provisioning knowledge lives in a repo, not in one person's head
• Run the Windows VMs that host wavemeter and vendor instrument software on Linux hosts you own.
• Take part in an on-call rotation for lab infrastructure.

Requirements:

• 6+ years of experience in systems, network, or infrastructure engineering, with real hands-on time provisioning servers, not just managing a team that did
• Hands-on experience configuring and troubleshooting switches, firewalls, routers, and on-prem servers in a production environment; this is not a design-and-delegate role
• Direct experience configuring VLANs and managed-switch environments, including diagnosing and resolving a network problem yourself, without escalating to a dedicated network team
• Experience building or rebuilding a provisioning workflow using infrastructure-as-code or automation tooling (Ansible, Salt, Kickstart, Foreman, Cobbler, Packer, or equivalent)
• Experience integrating non-standard or custom hardware into a compute environment: a scientific instrument, a specialist peripheral, or a device with a custom driver
• Working knowledge of IPMI/BMC and out-of-band server management
• Strong scripting ability (Python, Bash, PowerShell, or Go)
• Comfort operating in an environment where infrastructure failure directly blocks the work, and where the playbook for a new hardware generation is still being written

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience at a company running significant on-prem compute infrastructure at scale (bare-metal cloud, colocation, high-density compute), where you managed a real fleet rather than a handful of machines
• Experience with Kubernetes or container orchestration in a bare-metal or hybrid environment
• Experience with configuration drift detection and enforcement, and can describe how you verified idempotency in a provisioning pipeline
• Familiarity with cloud networking (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid on-prem/cloud environments
• Experience in a research, national lab, or scientific compute environment
• Prior exposure to quantum computing or another deep-tech hardware domain (not required; hands-on infrastructure experience matters far more than domain background)

The approximate base salary range for this position is $126,887 - $166,127. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

Location: This role is based at our College Park, MD office. Expect to be on site most days: the work is hands-on with racks, cabling, and lab equipment. Some remote days are possible.
Travel: Up to 15%
Job ID: 1741