Embedded Software Engineer

Qblox is a deep tech scaleup whose mission is to accelerate the worldwide race towards building scalable quantum computers. We do this by providing the world's best quantum control stacks.

Here comes the science bit:

Qblox develops control stacks that combine unrivalled noise and drift performance, a low-latency arbitrary control flow and scalability up to 1000s of qubits. The control stack generates the analogue pulses (DC to 18 GHz) needed for the control and readout of qubits. These analogue signals are generated from 1000s of parallel channels and driven by our proprietary sequence processor technology. Our products are used by R&D teams globally to accelerate the development of operational quantum computers and quantum networks. The technology we are developing is compatible with a broad range of qubit technologies (superconducting, spin, NV-centres, cold atoms).

To control so many qubits, we developed a modular system packed with high-end FPGAss that are synchronized with nanosecond precision, high-speed digital interfaces to multi-gigasample dataconverters, and ultra low-noise and low drift analog (RF) circuits. The FPGAs contain, among other things, our proprietary sequence processors that generate the pulses that control the quantum hardware.

Where the software comes in:

To interface with our equipment, we develop a software stack consisting of low-level drivers, compilers and assemblers written in C/C++ and higher-level tools written in Python. The current software department consists of around 25 engineers divided into three teams; Embedded Software Engineering, Software Engineering and the Test & Automation team. They all work closely with our Hardware engineers.

Where you come in:
Quantum algorithms are time critical and can only be controlled with a real-time complex of hardware and software components implemented in specific electronics. However, high-level software to translate scientific tasks into quantum algorithms can not and should not be real-time oriented. Because of this, Qblox build a middle-level software layer to control and translate a hard-limited low-level quantum world to a common high-level representation in the Python library.

In the position of Embedded Software Engineer you will build a Linux-based operation system for Qblox modules to control FPGAs on the board starting from the creation and support of kernel modules end up to MQTT mechanism of delivery requested parameters from the hardware. Of course this also includes integration with CI system and close communication with hardware, software and test engineers from the other teams.

Enough about us, what about you?

In order to really enjoy and succeed in this role, we imagine that you will have:

• Multiple years of experience working in a professional R&D environment, using:

  • Linux programming interfaces.

  • C language.

  • Linux build systems like Yocto or Buildroot.

  • Modern C++ language, we are using C++20 right now.

  • CMake as a modern C++ build system.

  • Git as a version control system.

• Nice to have:

  • Solid knowledge of Yocto project.

  • Linux driver development experience.

  • Gitlab CI experience

  • Basic knowledge of Python