Quantum Software Developer - High Performance Computing

About Xanadu

Xanadu’s mission is to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere.

At Xanadu, we are learners, innovators, researchers, collaborators and problem solvers. We are creating something that has never been built before. Few people in their life will be able to be a part of something like this, where if we are successful, the technologies we develop will solve some of the world’s most challenging problems, and literally change the world. And that is something to be excited about!

Your Role and Responsibilities

As part of the PennyLane Performance Team, you will be responsible for developing high-performance extensions and tooling for PennyLane, including the PennyLane Lightning simulator suite. You will be directly responsible for adding new features & hardware support, improving scalability across the stack, and ensuring PennyLane is the most performant framework for quantum computing.

You will:

• Convert abstract descriptions of algorithms into efficient & understandable software implementations.
• Perform R&D to support new hardware platforms, programming paradigms, and software tooling to enable optimal performance for quantum computing workloads.
• Interpret and communicate complex concepts to the wider team.
• Participate in software system specification, design, and quality assurance (e.g., requirements gathering, defining software architecture, documentation, verification & validation, etc.).
• Provide leadership in software best practices, including continuous-integration pipelines, unit testing, & code review.

Basic Qualifications and Experience:

• BSc in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or a related field.
• Strong programming experience in modern high-performance compiled languages and interpreted languages, including Python & modern C++ [11/14/17/20].
• Solid debugging skills for compiled and interpreted codes (e.g., gdb, lldb, pdb, cuda-gdb, etc.).
• Exposure/familiarity to machine learning/deep learning.
• Experience building scalable & reproducible scientific workloads.
• Familiarity with quantum computing.

Preferred Knowledge and Experience:

• MSc, PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Math, or a related field.
• Expertise in quantum computing, as demonstrated by extensive coursework, thesis, or peer-reviewed publications.
• Experience writing software explicitly targeting GPUs through CUDA, HIP/ROCm, OpenCL, SYCL/oneAPI or compiler offload directives.
• Experience with scientific computing on commodity / cloud hardware (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience with scientific computing on HPC / supercomputer platforms.
• Experience with build-system tooling & compilers (e.g., CMake, ninja, GCC, Clang, MSVC).
• Familiarity with multithreading (e.g., OpenMP, C++ threads) and multiprocessing (e.g., MPI) workloads.

Values

Our values are important. They are fundamental and lay the foundation for culture at Xanadu. Learn more about our values here.

At Xanadu, we are committed to building an inclusive, safe, and equitable culture and fostering an environment where our employees feel included, valued, and heard. We are committed to meeting the needs of all individuals and support a barrier-free workplace. Should you require accommodations at any point during the recruitment process please contact Human Resources at hr@xanadu.ai.