Senior Director, Developer Ecosystem

As Senior Director of Developer Ecosystem, you will lead the strategy and execution of IonQ’s developer relations, open-source contributions and consortia, and technical and scientific community engagement. Your mission is to make IonQ a friendly home for quantum developers and other technical experts through technical leadership, world-class content, and a developer experience that earns trust and loyalty, and ensuring that breakthroughs in quantum information science, quantum error correction, and quantum applications and algorithms happen on IonQ systems, or are easily replicated on them 

You will lead IonQ's effort to build and nurture an ecosystem of active, engaged developers and first-rate tools and enablement materials, both inside and outside of the organization. This includes defining and driving our developer experience and education strategy across first-party, third-party, and open-source tooling. If successful, you will help IonQ be a contributor and leader of an industrywide transition from NISQ-era capabilities for researchers and benchmarkers to application-centric, value driven fault-tolerant quantum computation (FTQC), shaping the programming models, tooling, and developer tools that will define how the world builds production quantum applications. 

This role sits at the intersection of product, engineering, and go-to-market. You will report to the VP of Product Management, Quantum Computing, driving vision and execution in partnership with peers across Product Management, Product Marketing, Engineering, Applications, Science, Field Engineering, and Customer Success to ensure that everything IonQ ships or contributes to — from SDKs to documentation to learning content to hackathons — meets a consistent industry-defining quality bar. 

Responsibilities:

• Developer Ecosystem Strategy and Execution. Own and drive IonQ's developer ecosystem strategy end to end: community, open-source engagement, developer experience, serving as the primary voice of developer community insights into product prioritization. Define what it means for IonQ to be a leading player on developer-facing platform benchmarks by 2030 and build the organization to get there. Work with mission-driven, cross-functional teams inside and outside of IonQ to execute and deliver this vision. 
• Open-Source Leadership. Engage with standards bodies, open-source foundations, and ecosystem partners to drive open-source governance and community benchmarking initiatives, prioritize efforts for maximum leverage and impact, and ensure IonQ’s voice and contributions shape the quantum software infrastructure that matters most. 
• Drive the IonQ Developer Tools Roadmap. Develop the strategy, execution, and distribution of IonQ’s developer tooling suite across APIs, SDKs, and other tools for IonQ end users across the full spectrum of technical personas. Work with Product Management, Engineering, and Science to ensure that as IonQ's hardware advances towards fault tolerance, the programming models, tooling, and content evolve in lockstep, so developers are never left behind and IonQ defines the standard others follow. 
• Drive World Class Documentation and Developer Education Content. Set and maintain the quality bar for all user-facing documentation, learning tools, access programs, and community resources / technical challenges, and similar technical content. Ensure a unified, consistent narrative that moves beyond Quantum 101 into scalable technical enablement for practitioners and enterprise adoption. Position IonQ's developer ecosystem and supporting narratives as a coherent differentiator. 
• Drive Key Adoption and Usage Metrics. Own two categories of success metrics: (1) adoption metrics: platform usage, provider rankings, community growth, and developer API/SDK/tool adoption driven by the developer experience function; and (2) product and conversion metrics: traffic to IonQ hardware, developer survey placement, and active practitioner growth. 
• Build and Lead a World-Class Team. Build and lead a multi-disciplinary organization, starting as a player-coach with a small number of high-leverage contributors, and expanding over time as need and impact dictate.

Requirements:

• 12+ years of experience in developer relations, developer ecosystem strategy, open-source community leadership, or technical product management.
• Deep passion for building a useful quantum computer and getting it in the hands of customers and end-users to make a meaningful impact on the world 
• A proven track record of building and scaling developer communities, ideally at the intersection of hardware and software platforms 
• Deep experience in open-source strategy and governance: you understand how influence is earned, and you've done it at scale 
• Experience building and leading multi-disciplinary teams spanning DevRel, Developer Education, and Engineering functions 
• Strong technical fluency: you can engage credibly with quantum computing researchers, compiler engineers, and application developers, even if your background is not in quantum physics or computer science. 
• Demonstrated ability to own and drive a developer experience roadmap with clear, measurable outcomes tied to adoption and conversion 
• Exceptional communication skills: you can rally ecosystem “frenemies” towards a common vision, negotiate with large organizations, whether commercial entities or national labs, and inspire a team and a community.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Direct experience as a key maintainer, contributor, or other leader for a quantum computing developer ecosystem (e.g., Qiskit, Cirq, PennyLane, or equivalent)
• Familiarity with the quantum computing landscape: NISQ-era tooling, quantum error correction, and the emerging requirements of fault-tolerant quantum computing 
• A network of relationships across the quantum hardware, software, and open-source ecosystem. 
• Experience working with government funding agencies (DOE, DARPA, NSF), where open-ecosystem positioning strengthens grant proposals 
• Background in participating in or leading a major project or product within a software foundation or industry coalition/consortium. 

Location: Bothell, WA
Travel: Up to 20%
Job ID:  1556

The approximate base salary range for this position is $265,423 - $347,507. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.