Technical Lead — Orchestration Control

• Define and own the technical architecture of the orchestration control stack spanning real-time firmware, middleware, networking, and application layers.
• Establish system-level performance specifications, including latency budgets, timing precision, throughput targets, and fault-tolerance requirements.
• Design the command, sequencing, and scheduling framework that coordinates arrays of control nodes to execute synchronized operations at nanosecond precision.
• Lead cross-team technical planning across firmware, infrastructure, and systems engineering; resolve interface conflicts and architectural trade-offs with clear, documented reasoning.
• Define and maintain the integration test strategy for the full control stack; own system-level acceptance criteria and the evidence behind them.
• Drive build-versus-buy decisions for middleware, real-time frameworks, and toolchain components.
• Recruit, mentor, and develop a high-performing engineering team; conduct architecture reviews, design critiques, and technical retrospectives that raise the standard of work across the group.
• Manage technical risk identification, mitigation, and escalation; lead root-cause analysis on system-level failures and ensure corrective actions are real rather than cosmetic.
• Collaborate with scientists, hardware engineers, and software teams to translate advanced and often ambiguous requirements into structured, executable control-system specifications.
• Contribute to technical proposals, program planning, roadmap development, and IP documentation.
• Represent Q-Block's control platform in discussions with partners, customers, and government stakeholders as appropriate, at a level of technical depth and clarity that earns trust.
• Contribute to a culture of ownership, rigor, and honest technical discussion across the engineering organization.

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering Physics, Physics, or a closely related field; Master's or Ph.D. is an asset.
• 10+ years of professional experience in embedded systems, real-time control, or distributed systems engineering, with at least 4 years in a technical leadership role.
• Demonstrated experience shipping production hardware-software systems, not exclusively research prototypes.
• Expert understanding of real-time systems: deterministic scheduling, latency analysis, hardware-software co-design, and multi-node synchronization.
• Broad technical range spanning embedded firmware, systems programming, networking, and application-layer software.
• Proven ability to lead and coordinate multi-disciplinary engineering teams through the full arc of architecture, design, delivery, and sustaining engineering.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; comfort presenting to both technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience architecting distributed control or data acquisition systems with strict timing requirements across multiple nodes and chassis.
• Hands-on familiarity with precision timing and frequency-reference systems, PTP, hardware-assisted synchronization, or comparable deterministic timing infrastructure.
• Experience integrating FPGA-based real-time processing into broader control architectures.
• Experience with HPC clustering, MPI-based orchestration, or comparable large-scale distributed computing environments.
• Track record of translating ambiguous research-stage requirements into structured engineering roadmaps with realistic risk and milestone plans.
• Experience in quantum technology, photonics, RF systems, radar, defense, aerospace, or scientific instrumentation.
• Experience working in regulated, security-sensitive, or defense-oriented engineering environments, including the documentation and process discipline those environments require.
• Experience recruiting and scaling technical teams in a deep-tech hardware company.

• Must be eligible to obtain and maintain Government of Canada security clearance, if required for assigned projects.
• Must be eligible to comply with requirements of the Controlled Goods Program, if required for assigned projects.
• Must be willing to participate in background screening, documentation, and compliance processes associated with security-sensitive work.
• Must be capable of operating in security-sensitive development environments and supporting compliance obligations associated with strategic or defense-related programs.

• Strategic mindset paired with execution discipline — able to hold the architecture and the delivery in mind simultaneously.
• Strong attention to detail, authenticity, and a sense of responsibility in all tasks.
• Clear technical judgment and the confidence to make calls with incomplete information when the work requires it.
• Integrity and directness in dealings with team, leadership, and external stakeholders.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to lead through influence as well as authority.

Q-Block Computing is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to treating all employees and applicants with respect and dignity. Accommodations are available on request during the application and recruiting process.

Canadian citizens and permanent residents are strongly encouraged to apply. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply.