Quantum Algorithms Researcher (Senior/Staff)

PsiQuantum's mission is to build the first useful quantum computers: machines capable of delivering the breakthroughs the field has long promised. Since our founding in 2016, our singular focus has been to build and deploy million-qubit, fault-tolerant quantum systems.

Quantum computers harness the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems that even the most advanced supercomputers or AI systems will never reach. Their impact will span energy, pharmaceuticals, finance, agriculture, transportation, materials, and other foundational industries.

Our architecture

and approach

is

based on silicon photonics. By

leveraging

the advanced semiconductor manufacturing industry, including partners like GlobalFoundries, we use the same high-volume processes that already produce billions of chips for telecom and consumer electronics. Photonics offers natural advantages for scale: photons

don't

feel heat, are immune to electromagnetic interference, and integrate with existing cryogenic cooling and standard fiber-optic infrastructure.

That approach has since been tested at the highest level of scrutiny the U.S. government applies to emerging technology, and it has held up. In 2025,

PsiQuantum

closed a

$1 billion

funding round that valued the company at

$7 billion. In 2026, the U.S. Department of Commerce signed a $100 million Letter of Intent under the CHIPS and Science Act, followed by a $125 million agreement with DARPA under Stage C of its Quantum Benchmarking Initiative,

PsiQuantum's

most valuable U.S. government agreement to date. This year, we also broke ground on our utility-scale quantum computer in Brisbane, Australia, and continued building out our Chicago site. Victor Peng, our CEO, and co-founder Jeremy O'Brien, now Executive

Chairman, lead a team and board that reflects how seriously the world is taking this build, joined this year by Intel's Lip-Bu Tan and Atomico's Niklas

Zennström.

PsiQuantum

also develops the algorithms and software needed to make these systems commercially valuable. Our application, software, and industry teams work directly with leading Fortune 500 companies, including

Airbus,

Lockheed

Martin, Mercedes-Benz, Boehringer Ingelheim, and Mitsubishi Chemical, to prepare quantum solutions for real-world impact.

Quantum computing is not an extension of classical computing. It

represents

a fundamental shift, and a path to mastering challenges that cannot be

solved

any other way. The potential is enormous, and we now have

the funding,

the government

validation, and

the sites

under construction to make it real.

Job Summary: PsiQuantum is seeking a Senior Quantum Algorithms Researcher to join the Quantum Algorithms team within our Applications Development department. This role offers the opportunity to help define how large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers will be applied to consequential real-world problems in chemistry, pharmaceuticals, and materials science.

At PsiQuantum, we believe in the transformative potential of quantum computing to solve problems beyond the reach of classical computation. For the first quantum computers to be useful, we believe they must be fault tolerant.

This conviction shapes our approach to applications research. Rather than developing algorithms for near-term or intermediate-scale devices, we focus on quantum algorithms designed for the fault-tolerant regime, where, specifically, the cost of a quantum algorithm is determined by its runtime on a fusion-based, fault-tolerant quantum computer built on silicon photonic hardware.

In the Quantum Algorithms team, we adapt and develop quantum algorithms, scope and identify promising use cases, and analyze resource requirements. In your role, you will translate computational tasks into abstract specifications for quantum algorithms, analyze their asymptotic performance, and help define meaningful problem instances that lie beyond the practical reach of classical computation. You will also work closely with PsiQuantum’s Compilation team to develop explicit instantiations of these algorithms and understand their resource requirements on our architecture.

We are particularly interested in candidates with deep expertise in quantum simulation. Relevant areas may include simulated time-evolution algorithms, quantum algorithms for estimating the energies of molecular or periodic systems, and methods for preparing candidate ground states of model Hamiltonians. More broadly, the successful candidate will bring substantial expertise in a specific subfield of quantum algorithms, together with the ability to connect fundamental algorithmic research to computationally and industrially relevant problems.

In this position, you will be expected not only to conduct outstanding individual research but also to formulate and lead broader research programs that encompass the work of other researchers and collaborators. You will contribute to cross-team initiatives across PsiQuantum’s applications, architecture, and compilation efforts, helping to connect algorithm design with the practical requirements of fault-tolerant quantum computation.

The role

may also include external engagements. You will have the opportunity to lead projects with industrial and research partners, working with domain experts to identify important computational challenges, extract well-defined problem formulations, and map those problems to appropriate quantum algorithms. This requires the ability to communicate across disciplinary boundaries and to move fluently between real-world applications, mathematical abstractions, algorithmic complexity, and implementation-level resource analysis.

The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with scientific leadership, intellectual independence, and a strong collab