Engineering Operations Lead

QuEra is seeking an Engineering Operations Lead to support day-to-day execution across software, hardware, test infrastructure, and QPU programs, helping make that work more predictable, visible, and efficient.

Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, this person will support the operating rhythm around engineering: planning meetings, cross-team dependency tracking, Jira and Confluence hygiene, release and integration coordination, operational metrics, and follow-up on decisions and action items. The role frees engineering leaders and senior technical staff to spend more time on architecture, technical decisions, team development, and delivery.

This is a hands-on individual-contributor role and a strong opportunity to learn how a complex hardware/software engineering organization operates. You will work closely with engineering and functional leaders, who remain accountable for priorities, staffing and resource allocation, architecture, technical acceptance criteria, technical risk acceptance, and release or machine go/no-go decisions. Your job is to keep the supporting structure running smoothly so those teams can work together effectively.

What you will do:

• Support engineering planning and execution
• Help run a consistent planning and review cadence across software, hardware, QPU programs, and test and engineering infrastructure, including scheduling, agendas, and follow-up.
• Work with leaders and technical owners to keep the engineering plan current, with named owners, milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria for each initiative.
• Maintain a clear, up-to-date view of active initiatives, planned work, key dependencies, risks, and delivery status.
• Coordinate and take notes for weekly execution reviews, roadmap reviews, release-readiness reviews, and milestone retrospectives.
• Flag priority or resource conflicts as you spot them and bring them to the appropriate leader.
• Track decisions and action items and follow up with owners until they are closed.
• Support Jira, Confluence, and GitHub hygiene
• Apply and help refine the standards for initiative, epic, issue, and release hygiene that engineering leaders set across engineering Jira projects.
• Check that active work has a clear owner, current status, priority, target date, dependency context, and definition of done, and follow up with owners when it does not.
• Keep Jira roadmaps, Confluence status pages, and engineering documentation up to date and consistent with GitHub delivery activity so reporting stays reliable.
• Prepare and help run regular backlog and work-in-progress reviews, flagging stale, duplicate, unowned, or poorly scoped work for leaders to address.
• Help maintain links between requirements, engineering decisions, implementation, validation, and release.
• Look for opportunities to automate recurring status collection and reporting, such as Jira dashboards, filters, and simple scripts.

 Cross-functional dependency and milestone management:

• Help track dependencies among software, hardware, systems, science, test infrastructure, lab operations, procurement, facilities, security, and external partners.
• Help maintain integrated plans for machine milestones, hardware/software integration gates, testbed readiness, and customer or partner commitments, using estimates and inputs from accountable owners.
• Track long-lead procurement, vendor, lab, compute, and test-equipment dependencies, and flag any that put engineering delivery at risk.
• Gather information and draft materials for leadership when scope, schedule, or capacity tradeoffs need a decision.
• Maintain risk, issue, and dependency logs for key programs and follow up with owners on mitigations and target dates.
• Escalate unresolved conflicts to your manager or the accountable leader rather than committing another team's resources, changing technical scope, or accepting technical risk.

 Facilitate release, quality, and operational readiness:

• Help coordinate release and deployment readiness across repositories, CI/CD pipelines, test environments, hardware configurations, and target machines.
• Maintain readiness checklists covering code, hardware, test evidence, documentation, rollback or recovery plans, and operational ownership; technical owners define the criteria and make go/no-go recommendations.
• Work with engineering owners to identify and document friction in build, test, release, and deployment flow.
• Track post-incident follow-up so corrective actions have clear owners, due dates, and status; the responsible engineering or infrastructure owner leads incident response, diagnosis, and root-cause analysis.
• Track and report operational and quality metrics such as aging work, escaped defects, reopened issues, cycle time, blocked work, release predictability, and action-item closure.

Support engineering communications and continuous improvement:

• Draft clear, accurate weekly and monthly engineering updates for review by engineering leadership.
• Prepare meeting agendas, pre-reads, decision records, and action logs.
• Help keep engineering processes, ownership, and key documentation easy to find, and support shared onboarding materials; functional leaders own role-specific onboarding and technical training.
• Point out recurring coordination work that could be standardized, automated, or eliminated.
• Support the rollout of QuEra's unified hardware/software engineering process, including synchronized planning and integration gates approved by engineering leadership.

Decision-rights summary:

• The Engineering Operations Lead supports the engineering operating cadence, integrated plan, dependency and risk tracking, reporting, readiness coordination, and action follow-up, with direction from the SVP of Engineering.
• Engineering, Product, Science, Hardware, Software, and Test & Engineering Infrastructure leaders retain ownership of strategy and priorities, architecture and design, people management, staffing and resource allocation, technical estimates and acceptance criteria, underlying build/release/deployment systems, incident command and root-cause conclusions, and final technical go/no-go decisions.

What we're looking for:

• 5+ years of experience in engineering operations, project coordination, program support, or a similar role in a technical environment; relevant internship or co-op experience counts.
• Hands-on experience with Jira and Confluence; familiarity with GitHub is a plus.
• Strong organization and attention to detail, with a habit of following up until things are done.
• Clear written communication, including meeting notes, status updates, and documentation.
• Comfort working with engineers and scientists across disciplines, and eagerness to learn about quantum computing hardware and software.
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, science, business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Nice to have: basic scripting (e.g., Python) or experience building Jira dashboards and automations.

We consistently monitor external market data and update base salary ranges accordingly.  We determine base compensation decisions on several factors, including as geographic placement, role-specific knowledge, skills, and/or experience.  In addition to our base salary offerings, we also provide equity grants for all new hires. $140,000-$160,000.

QuEra is committed to cultivating a diverse work environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We highly value diversity in our current and future employees and do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) based on race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law.