R&D Manager – Software -914

About This Opportunity

We are representing a confidential quantum computing organization seeking an R&D Manager - Software to lead their programming-language and compiler development team. This hybrid role is based in Cambridge, UK, with an expectation of on-site presence several days per week.

This position balances technical leadership with people management in roughly equal measure. You'll guide a team building critical quantum software infrastructure—programming languages, compilers, and developer tooling—that enables translation of high-level quantum programs into production-ready systems. You'll define technical roadmaps, make architectural decisions, and remain hands-on through design reviews, problem-solving, and implementation.

Prior quantum computing experience is valued but not required. What matters most is demonstrated leadership ability and strong software engineering experience in relevant domains.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing software engineering team, setting clear expectations and supporting career growth at all levels
• Define and deliver the team roadmap in partnership with software leadership and senior engineers, managing capacity allocation, progress tracking, and cross-team dependencies
• Provide technical leadership across the language, compiler, and developer-tooling stack
• Guide software through the complete development lifecycle from research prototypes to tested, documented, production-ready releases
• Collaborate with research, applications, product, hardware, and other software teams across UK and US locations to ensure stack alignment with priority use cases
• Recruit, onboard, and retain excellent engineers while continuously improving team engineering and delivery practices

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Physics, Electrical Engineering, or related field
• Minimum five years of combined experience in software engineering, compiler development, programming-language development, or closely related technical R&D (relevant postgraduate research including master's and PhD study may count toward this total)
• Demonstrated leadership of technical projects or teams, including shaping technical direction, mentoring engineers, and coordinating delivery
• Experience making and communicating architectural decisions for production software, with attention to testing, documentation, and long-term maintainability
• Strong planning and communication skills with ability to work effectively across technical disciplines

Valued Experience:

• Quantum software development, particularly programming languages, compilers, intermediate representations, runtime systems, or execution tooling
• Understanding of quantum programming models, hardware-software co-design, and classical-quantum computation interaction
• Direct experience designing or implementing programming languages, type systems, compiler passes, or intermediate representations
• Production-quality software development in Rust or Python
• Line management or team lead experience including coaching, recruiting, onboarding, and career development support
• Leading or collaborating with geographically distributed technical teams
• Contributing to or maintaining open-source software and working with developer communities
• Track record of maturing research prototypes into customer-facing or engineering-team software

How We Work With You

When you apply through Get A Job.ai, our talent team will review your background and conduct an initial screening conversation. If there's a strong match, we'll submit your profile to our client for consideration. Throughout the process, we'll provide guidance and feedback to support your candidacy.

Important: Please apply exclusively through Get A Job.ai. Do not contact the client directly, as this may disqualify your application.

Pay

Compensation details will be discussed during the screening process based on your experience and qualifications.

Equal Employment Opportunity: Get A Job.ai is committed to inclusive recruiting practices. We welcome applications from candidates of all backgrounds and provide reasonable accommodations throughout our process.