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Principal Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Architect

Santa Clara, California, United States

About IonQ: 

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.  

Location: Onsite or Hybrid in Santa Clara / Bay Area, CA
Travel: Up to 25%,  Domestic & International
Job ID:  1648

The Role: 

We are looking for a Principal Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Architect to join our Platform Engineering Team.

As a Principal Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Architect, you'll be part of a cross-functional team whose mission is to lead IonQ on its journey to build the world's best quantum computers to solve the world's most complex problems.

The Principal Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Architect is the senior technical IC and Architecture Board Chair of the Platform Engineering Team, responsible for shaping the technical vision for secure, resilient, and scalable infrastructure platforms at global scale across mission-critical services. This role brings deep experience across cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, security architecture, SRE, and operational transformation, connecting technical decisions to business outcomes and long-term platform strategy.

In this role, you will be responsible for defining and evolving a highly available and secure infrastructure across AWS and on-premises hardware, including foundational platform services, operational standards, and engineering practices that support reliability, scalability, compliance, backup and restore readiness, and disaster recovery across business-critical and customer-facing workloads. This role works closely with engineering, security, and product teams as a senior technical leader, shaping the platform roadmap, guiding architectural decisions through the Architecture Board, and mentoring senior engineers across the organization while serving as a trusted architecture authority.

The ideal candidate is someone who understands this is a hands-on role. The Principal Architect writes production infrastructure code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible), builds proof-of-concept implementations, debugs complex distributed system failures, and leads by example through daily technical execution — not solely through review and oversight.

Responsibilities:

  • Define the multi-year technical vision and end-to-end architecture across AWS and on-premises infrastructure, producing high-level designs for hybrid cloud connectivity.
  • Architect highly available, fault-tolerant systems and drive proactive resilience strategies including chaos engineering, failure simulations, and comprehensive recovery/restore testing.
  • Lead infrastructure security designs utilizing network segmentation, zero-trust principles, and boundary protection, ensuring compliance with SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, and FedRAMP frameworks.
  • Maintain core platform services including identity, networking, multi-region deployments, physical servers, on-premises network gear (Juniper, Cisco, Ubiquiti), and runtime controls for agentic AI platforms.
  • Enforce Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) standards and chair the Architecture Board to align technical governance and hold tie-breaking authority over engineering standards.
  • Establish incident response frameworks, lead critical escalations, and configure observability stacks or alerting systems to optimize platform reliability and restoration times.
  • Align the multi-year technical roadmap with business outcomes, capacity planning, and TCO optimization while mentoring senior technical leaders across the organization.
  • Promote industry thought leadership by representing the organization through external speaking engagements, publications, patents, or open-source contributions.
  • Execute daily technical tasks hands-on by writing production code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible), implementing IAM/encryption controls, and debugging complex distributed system failures.

Requirements:

  • 12–15 years of professional experience in Cloud Infrastructure, Platform Engineering, System Engineering, or SRE, including 8 years of experience building, scaling, or transforming Platform Engineering or SRE organizations.
  • 10 years of experience operating production environments with real customer workloads at scale, alongside 10 years of experience in highly available, secure, and scalable distributed systems design.
  • 10 years of experience with AWS Cloud Architecture and Services (multi-account, multi-region) and 5 years of experience with AWS Organizations, Control Tower, and Service Control Policies.
  • 8 years of experience in cloud networking (VPC design, Transit Gateway, routing, segmentation, dual-stack IPv4/IPv6).
  • 6 years of experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Ansible) and 5 years of experience in Kubernetes Platform Architecture (EKS, Bottlerocket, ARM64/Graviton, FIPS).
  • 6 years of experience with security controls and cloud security (WAF, DDoS mitigation, layered edge/app protection), paired with 6 years of experience in network security, encryption, authentication, authorization, and identity-centric access.
  • 5 years of experience in backup, restore, and disaster recovery for mission-critical platforms.

Preferred Qualifications:

  • Relevant certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect Professional, GCP Professional Cloud Architect, CISSP, or CCSP, and demonstrated industry impact through technical publications, conference presentations, or significant open-source contributions.
  • Experience with multi-cloud infrastructure management (AWS, GCP, Azure), on-premises network architecture (Juniper, Cisco, Ubiquiti), and hybrid cloud connectivity.
  • Expertise in distributed systems, microservice architectures, container orchestration (Kubernetes), continuous deployment at enterprise scale, global database architectures, and distributed data systems.
  • Deep expertise in Linux/Unix internals, file systems, system tuning, administration, networking, and troubleshooting across network, application, and distributed service layers.
  • Experience designing and operating centralized identity platforms (SSO, IAM federation, OAuth/OIDC) within regulated environments or compliance-driven infrastructure at enterprise or federal scale (financial services, healthcare, federal/defense).
  • Experience with AWS Fault Injection Simulator, resilience testing frameworks, and exposure to AI/ML infrastructure, GPU-based workloads, or agentic AI platform services.
  • Experience leading platform or infrastructure teams through transformational change or hyper-growth phases.
  • Track record of TCO optimization, capacity planning, and infrastructure capital planning for global deployments.


The approximate base salary range for this position is $248,557 - $325,425. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

Compensation will vary based on individual factors such as education, qualifications, and experience of the final candidate(s), specific office location, and calibration against relevant market data and internal team equity.  Posted base salary figures are subject to change as new market data becomes available. Our benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, matching 401K, unlimited PTO and paid holidays, parental/adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend.  Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided when a candidate receives an offer of employment. 

At IonQ, we believe in fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all while striving to identify and eliminate barriers. We empower employees to thrive by fostering a culture of autonomy, productivity, and respect. We are dedicated to creating an environment where individuals can feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.
 
We are committed to equity and justice. We welcome different voices and viewpoints and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

US Technical Jobs. The position you are applying for will require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control and government contract restrictions.  Employment with IonQ is contingent on either verifying “U.S. Person” (e.g., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum) status for export controls and government contracts work, obtaining any necessary license, and/or confirming the availability of a license exception under U.S. export controls.  Please note that in the absence of confirming you are a U.S. Person for export control and government contracts work purposes, IonQ may choose not to apply for a license or decline to use a license exception (if available) for you to access export-controlled technology that may require authorization, and similarly, you may not qualify for government contracts work that requires U.S. Persons, and IonQ may decline to proceed with your application on those bases alone.  Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.  

US Non-Technical Jobs. Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.

If you are interested in being a part of our team and mission, we encourage you to apply! 


 

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