Senior Program Manager

Location: This role is based at our Bothell, WA office, with the option to work a few days a week remotely.
Travel: Up to 10%
Job ID: 1772

The Role: 

We are looking for a customer-obsessed, execution-driven technical program manager to build and lead IonQ's new Delivery Excellence function. Your mission is to build and operate the systems that align a variety of complex delivery motions that must come together to ensure our customers get the right things on time, we get paid on time, and the customer is delighted with the entire experience. As a technical program manager within IonQ's Quantum Computing product family, you'll be part of a cross-functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build and deliver the world's best quantum computers to solve the world's most complex problems.

We need a self-starting, highly organized leader to help us continue to move quantum out of the lab and into the world of scientific and commercial utility. This means strength and depth in both technical and business topics, constant curiosity and intellectual humility, and the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with a broad variety of internal and external stakeholders. This role in particular requires the judgment to hold many moving programs at once, the discipline to keep a predictable reporting rhythm when everyone around you is improvising, and the credibility to pull status from engineering and science teams and turn it into something a customer or an executive can trust.

In this role, you will own how IonQ delivers on its commitments to customers for on-premise quantum computing installs. Today that work is spread across many teams, with no common coordination function and no shared source of truth for who owes what, by when. You will change that: build the lightweight systems, reviews, and reporting cadence that keep delivery predictable; stand up the coordination function across GTM, Product, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Finance; and hire and lead a small team of program managers to scale the function as our customer base and product portfolio grow. Customer Success and Account Executives will continue to own the broader commercial and customer relationship, but you will own the delivery relationship for our highest-profile, highest-value customers, from contract signature through acceptance.

If you're passionate about bringing order to ambiguity, energized by the operational challenge of delivering hard technology to demanding customers, and excited about the opportunity to make a significant impact on the trajectory of IonQ and the quantum computing industry at large, we'd love to hear from you

Responsibilities:

• Clarify Commitments: Know every deal's delivery and reporting obligations: who owes what, to whom, and by when. Turn contracts and the between-the-lines expectations into a clear, shared picture of what "delivered" means for each customer. Address new needs and ambiguities as they arise, balancing margin, timeline, customer happiness, and roadmap alignment. 
• Build the Backbone: Stand up and maintain the operating model for delivery for large-scale deals that that satisfy customers and internal stakeholders on a predictable cadence: templates and runbooks that can be tailored per-customer, a visible schedule and set of reporting artifacts that communicate progress to both customer and internal stakeholders, clear interfaces with deal review to catch deals with engineering or reporting impact before we commit to them.
• Align and De-Risk: Partner across Engineering, Operations, Manufacturing, Field Engineering, Finance, and GTM to keep commitments realistic and surface risk early. Run cross-functional reviews that clarify plans, deliverables, and escalate hard tradeoffs before they become missed dates or deferred revenue.
• Deliver Excellence: Coordinate and drive various sub-programs to achieve aligned, on-time delivery, bring-up, and reporting. Drive towards consistency and repeatability while acknowledging and supporting the unique needs and requirements of each customer. Maintain an extremely high bar for customer experience and communication throughout. 
• Build and Lead: Hire, grow, and lead a small team of program managers who can scale this system over time. Set the bar, define the playbook, and scale the function in step with our customers and our product portfolio, without letting it grow heavier than the job requires.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent real-world experience
• 12+ years of experience in technical program management, delivery leadership, or equivalent roles, in hardware, deep-tech, or otherwise complex systems environments
• A track record of leading cross-functional delivery of complex, multi-team programs for external customers, including ones with formal reporting and governance requirements
• Experience building and leading a program management team
• Enough technical fluency to pull status directly from engineering, facilities, and other technical teams and turn it into reporting that customers and executives trust
• World-class written and verbal communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to articulate complex topics to technical and non-technical audiences
• A demonstrated ability to act as a self-starting, high-accountability leader in ambiguous and challenging environments, driving impact through persistence and adaptability

Preferred Qualifications:

Preferred, but not required if you have a willingness and proven ability to learn quickly

• Experience delivering physical hardware or complex scientific instruments to customers, including the handoff from manufacturing to field deployment and bring-up
• Experience standing up or scaling a program-management or delivery function from scratch
• Familiarity with Quantum Computing, Quantum Information Science, or deep-tech R&D.
• Experience in Private Cloud Deployment, Scientific Computing, or High Performance Computing — their tools, users, business models, and operational challenges
• Direct experience with government contracting and milestone-based technical reporting for scientific or research missions (DARPA, DOE, NSF, or similar)

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