IonQ - Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

• 6+ years of backend software engineering experience, with a strong record of shipping production services at scale. • Proven, hands-on proficiency in Go and/or Rust — you write these languages regularly and can demonstrate production systems you have built with them. • Solid experience building and operating distributed data systems: event streaming (Kafka, Kinesis, or equivalent), time-series databases, and high-throughput ingestion pipelines. • Strong fundamentals in distributed systems: consistency models, failure modes, backpressure, idempotency, and exactly-once vs. at-least-once processing tradeoffs. • Experience with cloud-native deployment: containerization (Docker), Kubernetes orchestration, and operating services across at least one major cloud provider (AWS, GCP, or Azure). • Familiarity with observability tooling — structured logging, metrics (Prometheus/Grafana or equivalent), and distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry or equivalent). • Comfortable writing SQL and working with both relational and time-series data models; experience with schema design and query optimization. • Strong engineering practices: test-driven or test-informed development, code review, CI/CD, and operational ownership including on-call. • Experience with network telemetry protocols (gNMI, NETCONF, SNMP) or prior work at a network equipment vendor or network management platform company (e.g., Juniper, Cisco, Nokia). • Hands-on experience with graph databases or graph data models for network topology (e.g., Neo4j, Amazon Neptune, or custom adjacency representations). • Familiarity with YANG data modeling or prior experience working with device configuration schemas in network management contexts. • Experience building multi-tenant SaaS backend services with strong data isolation and per-tenant resource management. • Contributions to open-source infrastructure, observability, or networking projects; or published technical writing on distributed systems topics. • Experience working in or adjacent to regulated, security-conscious environments (FedRAMP, NIST, or equivalent). • The approximate base salary range for this position is $163,430 - $213,972. 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 401(k), 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.