Principal Solutions Architect - Quantum-Safe Networks

Location: This position is US-based and can work onsite or hybrid from one of our offices or fully remote.
Travel: Up to 30%, domestic and international
Job ID: 1779 

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 two places. About half your time is customer-facing: in collaboration with our GTM colleagues, you’ll be leading architecture discussions, designing quantum-safe target architectures and migration paths, running proofs of concept and interoperability tests, and supporting complex pursuits as the technical authority. The other half is design authority, standards work, and providing thought leadership internally and externally: turning what you learn in the field into reference architectures, migration playbooks, standards, whitepapers, blogs, 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 — spanning WAN and transport, data center and campus, segmentation and access control, key management, and the crypto that underpins all of it.
• Lead technical discovery and architecture workshops with network, security, and infrastructure teams. Assess the current state, identify where cryptography is embedded and where it is brittle, and build a migration plan the customer can actually execute.
• Own the technical thread in complex pursuits: architecture proposals, RFI/RFP responses, security and compliance questions, competitive positioning, and objection handling — in partnership with Sales.
• In collaboration with the Sales Engineers, design and run proofs of concept, interoperability tests, and pilots — including PQC and hybrid key exchange in production-representative network environments and, where relevant, QKD-integrated links — together with our engineering teams and customer staff.
• Translate field learning into reusable reference architectures, migration playbooks, interoperability matrices, and design guides that scale beyond the deals you personally work.
• Serve as the customer's voice in the product process. Bring architectural constraints, integration gaps, and roadmap requirements to Product and Engineering with enough specificity to be actionable, and hold us to them.
• Track how the standards and threat landscape actually move and contribute to them — NIST PQC standards and migration guidance, protocol work in the IETF, national and sector-specific mandates and deadlines — and keep our architectures and guidance ahead of it.
• Partner with Marketing, Corporate Communications, and GTM to build IonQ's technical presence in the networking and security community: talks, papers, blogs, standards bodies, and industry events.
• Raise the technical bar around you — architecture reviews, mentoring, and the design patterns the rest of the team reuses.

Requirements:

• 15+ years designing and securing enterprise and/or service provider networks, in a solutions architecture, network architecture, security architecture, or senior customer-facing engineering capacity.
• Deep (hands-on) knowledge of how networks are built and secured today: routing and switching, IP transport, network segmentation, firewall and access control design, VPN and encryption at the network layer, and Zero Trust principles applied to real infrastructure. Multi-vendor experience (for example, Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, Fortinet, Nokia) is expected.
• Working knowledge of applied cryptography as it appears in networks: TLS, IPsec, MACsec, PKI and certificate lifecycle, key management, and how algorithm and key material choices are made and changed in practice.
• Demonstrated ability to work in front of customers at multiple levels — leading workshops, running architecture discussions with engineers, and holding a credible conversation with a CISO or SVP of Infrastructure about risk, cost, and sequencing.
• A serious interest in where this is heading, and enough grounding to be credible on day one: post-quantum cryptography and crypto-agility, quantum key distribution, and the migration challenge facing existing networks. You do not need to have shipped a PQC migration — very few people have — but you should be able to reason about the problem rigorously and be visibly motivated to go deep.
• Strong written communication. Architectures, migration plans, and design guidance are a large part of the output.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Willingness to travel up to 30%, primarily within the US, with incidental international travel.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with post-quantum cryptography migration: cryptographic discovery and inventory, crypto-agility architecture, hybrid key exchange, or PQC deployment in a network or PKI context.
• Hands-on exposure to quantum key distribution or quantum networking — testbeds, carrier or research trials, key delivery interfaces to encryptors, or optical and transport-layer integration.
• Experience at a network or security vendor, service provider, hyperscaler, or a large enterprise network or security team — with real accountability for architecture decisions at scale.
• Familiarity with the security and compliance frameworks customers will map this work to: NIST CSF, CIS Benchmarks, ISO 27001, FISMA, FedRAMP, or sector-specific regulation.
• Public-sector, defense, financial services, or telecom experience, where high-assurance and long data-confidentiality horizons make this problem urgent today.
• Contributions to standards or the technical community: IETF, ETSI, national PQC migration working groups, published writing, or conference talks.
• Certifications that validate technical depth — CISSP, CCIE/JNCIE, CCNP Security, or equivalent.
• Comfort with automation and tooling — Python, config-as-code, network telemetry — enough to build a credible demo or analysis yourself rather than waiting on someone else.

The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.