Principal Solutions Architect - Quantum-Safe Networks

The Role

We are looking for a Principal Solutions Architect to design how networks become quantum-safe — for the largest network operators, enterprises, and government agencies in the world.

Today's networks are secured with cryptography that a cryptographically relevant quantum computer will break. Every operator and enterprise will have to inventory their cryptography, make it agile, migrate to post-quantum algorithms, and in the highest-assurance segments complement that with quantum-safe key distribution. Almost nobody knows yet what that architecture actually looks like. That is the problem you will solve — first with customers, on real networks, and then as reusable architectures that shape what IonQ builds.

This role sits deliberately in multiple places. A part of your time is customer-facing: in collaboration with our GTM colleagues, you'll lead architecture discussions, design quantum-safe target architectures and migration paths, run proofs of concept and interoperability tests, and support complex pursuits as the technical authority. The other part of your time is spent on design authority, standards work, and providing thought leadership internally and externally, including public speaking: turning what you learn in the field from internal and external peers into reference architectures, migration playbooks, standards, white papers, blogs, conference talks, and product requirements that our engineering and product teams build against.

You are equally comfortable in a firewall design review as you are in a discussion about hybrid key exchange and crypto-agility. You can explain to a CISO why their crypto inventory is the hard part, and to a network engineer exactly which IPsec algorithms to use and where they could insert external key material in order to become quantum-safe.

This is not a software architecture role — you will not own a codebase (it’s a plus if you can do some scripting). It is an architecture and customer role: you own designs, decisions, and the technical credibility of IonQ's quantum-safe networking story.

Responsibilities

• Design quantum-safe target architectures and migration paths for customer networks