Senior Director, Developer Ecosystem

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.  

As Senior Director of Developer Ecosystem, you will lead the strategy and execution of IonQ’s developer relations, open-source contributions and consortia, and technical and scientific community engagement. Your mission is to make IonQ a friendly home for quantum developers and other technical experts through technical leadership, world-class content, and a developer experience that earns trust and loyalty, and ensuring that breakthroughs in quantum information science, quantum error correction, and quantum applications and algorithms happen on IonQ systems, or are easily replicated on them. 

You will lead IonQ's effort to build and nurture an ecosystem of active, engaged developers and first-rate tools and enablement materials, both inside and outside of the organization. This includes defining and driving our developer experience and education strategy across first-party, third-party, and open-source tooling. If successful, you will help IonQ be a contributor and leader of an industrywide transition from NISQ-era capabilities for researchers and benchmarkers to application-centric, value driven fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC), shaping the programming models, tooling, and developer tools that will define how the world builds production quantum applications. 

This role sits at the intersection of product, engineering, and go-to-market. You will report to the VP of Product Management, Quantum Computing, driving vision and execution in partnership with peers across Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering, Applications, Science, Field Engineering, and Customer Success to ensure that everything IonQ ships or contributes to — from SDKs to documentation to learning content to hackathons — meets a consistent industry-defining quality bar. 

• →12+ years of experience in developer relations, developer ecosystem strategy, open-source community leadership, or technical product management.
• →Deep passion for building a useful quantum computer and getting it in the hands of customers and end-users to make a meaningful impact on the world 
• →A proven track record of building and scaling developer communities, ideally at the intersection of hardware and software platforms 
• →Deep experience in open-source strategy and governance: you understand how influence is earned, and you've done it at scale 
• →Experience building and leading multi-disciplinary teams spanning DevRel, Developer Education, and Engineering functions 
• →Strong technical fluency: you can engage credibly with quantum computing researchers, compiler engineers, and application developers, even if your background is not in quantum physics or computer science. 
• →Demonstrated ability to own and drive a developer experience roadmap with clear, measurable outcomes tied to adoption and conversion 
• →Exceptional communication skills: you can rally ecosystem “frenemies” towards a common vision, negotiate with large organizations, whether commercial entities or national labs, and inspire a team and a community.

• Direct experience as a key maintainer, contributor, or other leader for a quantum computing developer ecosystem (e.g., Qiskit, Cirq, PennyLane, or equivalent)
• Familiarity with the quantum computing landscape: NISQ-era tooling, quantum error correction, and the emerging requirements of fault-tolerant quantum computing 
• A network of relationships across the quantum hardware, software, and open-source ecosystem. 
• Experience working with government funding agencies (DOE, DARPA, NSF), where open-ecosystem positioning strengthens grant proposals 
• Background in participating in or leading a major project or product within a software foundation or industry coalition/consortium. 

Location: Bothell, WA
Travel: Up to 20%
Job ID:  1556

The approximate base salary range for this position is $265,423 - $347,507. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.