Quantum Control Scientist

Quantum Control Scientist

Nu Quantum

Cambridge, United Kingdom

About the role

As a Quantum Control Scientist within our Atomic, Molecular & Optical (AMO) team, this role operates at the intersection of physics and engineering, commissioning and developing the real-time control layer that drives our in-house trapped-ion quantum processing units.

Our experimental control systems are built on the ARTIQ platform, providing a real-time and flexible orchestration of complex hardware. The position involves designing and implementing reliable workflows for time-critical data acquisition and stabilisation protocols, interfacing primarily in Python with diverse systems such as custom electronics, laser and RF hardware.

We are looking for a creative problem-solver to work in a hands-on lab environment. You will develop and optimise real-time control software tightly integrated with experimental instrumentation. Collaboration with physicists, engineers and software specialists is central to the role, contributing to a high-quality, maintainable code-base, while ensuring your solutions are robust, scalable and future-proof within our rapidly growing company.

Responsibilities

• Develop and manage real-time orchestration of experimental hardware with the open-source ARTIQ platform.
• Integrate and control custom hardware (e.g. boards from electronics and FPGA teams), and third-party hardware, primarily using Python.
• Monitor experimental parameters and automate their analysis to reduce manual overhead and improve repeatability.
• Commission, document and train team members on hardware and software systems.
• Collaborate closely with physicists and engineers to meet technical and performance objectives.
• Develop graphical user interfaces for experimental control, real-time monitoring, and data visualisation.
• Coordinate with the software team to standardise workflows, upholding company-wide best practice for maintainable and scalable code.

Requirements

Your skills, qualifications and experience

• Postgraduate degree in Experimental Physics or equivalent experience working in an optics, AMO physics, or ion trapping laboratory (lasers, cavities, RF systems and qubit control).
• Demonstrated experience diagnosing and resolving issues with real-time control platforms based on FPGA or microcontroller architectures, ideally including familiarity with the ARTIQ platform.
• Strong software development skills for scientific or experimental environments, preferably including Python.
• Experience integrating, controlling and automating laboratory subsystems and instrumentation for experimental control and measurement (such as oscilloscopes, network analysers, RF generators, imaging systems and laser control units) through driver development, gateware design or API interfacing.
• Proven ability to debug complex hardware-software interactions, with a methodical approach to developing diagnostic and corrective solutions.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to adapt technical content and context to varied audiences.
• Commitment to facilitate effective cross-team knowledge transfer through clear documentation and structured handovers.

Desirable (nice to have but not required)

This is a wide-ranging role, so we work with a lot of tools. We don’t expect you to have prior experience of all these, and we’ll provide training on the job. If you do have experience with any of these though, do let us know, it might be useful!

• Familiarity with building infrastructure as code, such as automation (e.g. Ansible) and/or version control (e.g. Git).
• Experience with Linux-based deployment or development environments (schedulers, scripting, package management, socket communication, etc.).
• Knowledge of hardware control protocols (e.g. PyVisa, SCPI, MQTT).
• Familiarity with metrics and visualization frameworks (e.g. Prometheus, Influx, Grafana).
• Experience with numerical computing tools (e.g. Numpy, SciPy, Octave, Matlab).
• Experience using issue-tracking systems (e.g. Jira, YouTrack, GitHub/GitLab).
• Experience developing basic GUI tools (e.g. with PyQt or similar frameworks) for experimental control or data visualisation.