300 K · The open field
QuantumRecruits represents the scientists, engineers, and leaders building quantum computing, across every discipline of the stack, from theory to cryostat. Confidential. Global. Always free for candidates.
Two doors, one field
Confidential by default, free forever, and vetted by people who can read your papers. See what we do for candidates, and the sixteen disciplines we recruit across.
Explore For companiesNo percentage of anyone's salary. Flat monthly access, a talent map you own, and fractional arrangements for specializations too scarce to hire exclusively.
ExploreWhy we exist
Funding is no longer quantum's bottleneck. People are. For every three open quantum roles, there is one qualified candidate. We exist to find the one.
Sources: McKinsey & Company, 2022 · QED-C workforce survey, 2024
The process
Recruiting, run like an experiment: every stage removes noise, until only signal remains.
We sit with you until we understand the physics of the role, or of your career, not just the title on it.
We chart the global field of people who can actually do the work. In quantum, that is often dozens, not thousands.
Peer-level review of papers, patents, code, and references, plus the conversations that reveal how someone really works.
A shortlist measured in ones, then offer, negotiation, visa, and landing, managed to the first day and beyond.
About QuantumRecruits
Physicists, engineers, and search veterans who spent years inside the labs we now recruit for. Quantum is not a vertical we added to a list. It is the only thing we do.
Our story
QuantumRecruits began with a pattern we kept seeing from inside the field: extraordinary people staying invisible. A fluxonium readout specialist is not found through a job board. A cryogenics engineer who can keep a system at ten millikelvin through a facility move is not a keyword. And most of the recruiters calling them could not tell a first-author result from a courtesy co-authorship.
So we built the agency we wished existed when we were on the bench: one that recruits for a single field, covers all of it, and is run by people who have written the papers, debugged the control stack, and sat through the 3 a.m. cooldowns. From New York we cover the Americas and Asia-Pacific. From Munich, Europe and everything in between. One network, two time zones, zero generalists. And a commercial model with no percentage in it, because the convention that pays a recruiter more for a bigger offer was never built for a field where the whole candidate pool fits in one room.
How we work
We tell candidates and clients the truth, including the version that costs us the engagement. In a field this small, one inflated promise ends a reputation.
Papers read, code run, references called. A recommendation from us is a measurement, not an impression.
Confidentiality is our ground state. Names move only with explicit consent, on both sides of every search.
Where we are
40.71° N · 74.01° W
Our Americas hub, on the same clock as the capital, the national labs of the northeast corridor, and the trading floors funding quantum. Runs searches across North America and Asia-Pacific.
Americas & APAC · Eastern Time
48.14° N · 11.58° E
Our European hub, inside the densest cluster of quantum research on the continent: two technical universities, the Max Planck and Fraunhofer institutes, and a growing bench of hardware companies. Runs searches across Europe, the UK, and the Middle East.
Europe & EMEA · Central European Time
Hiring? Write to search@quantumrecruits.com
Our stats
We hold ourselves to the standard our candidates live by: if it is not measured, it is not real. These are the numbers we run on.
Global reach
Two hubs, New York and Munich, and placement corridors into every serious quantum geography.
United States · Canada · United Kingdom · Netherlands · France · Germany · Switzerland · Finland · Japan · Australia
Historical distribution
The market we operate in
Qualified candidates per open quantum role, per McKinsey research on the quantum talent gap.
US job postings requiring quantum skills roughly tripled between 2011 and 2024.
Quantum companies naming the lack of qualified candidates their single biggest hiring barrier, per QED-C survey data.
Candidate feedback
Quantum is a village: everyone knows everyone, and reputation compounds. Here is what the people we placed say when asked.
“I had spent six years on fluxonium readout and had no idea what that was worth outside the lab. They did. Three interviews, one offer I would never have found on my own, and my advisor never heard a word until I told him myself.”
“Every recruiter claims they read your papers. These are the first who could ask a real question about my decoder benchmarks. The shortlist had three companies, and all three made sense.”
“I am not a physicist. I keep dilution fridges alive, and most agencies have no idea what to do with that. QuantumRecruits placed me in three weeks and negotiated on-call terms I did not know I could ask for.”
“As a group lead quietly exploring industry, discretion was everything. Not one conversation happened without my sign-off. In the end I stayed in academia, and they respected that too. No pressure, door open.”
“They translated eight years of compiler work into language a CTO could act on, benchmarked my equity ask against real data, and stayed in the room until the last IP clause read the way it should.”
“Moving my family from Sydney to Munich felt bigger than the job itself. Visa, schools, the handover period with my old lab: handled. I started at base temperature on day one.”
The ecosystem
Some of the organizations defining quantum computing today. If you build for one of them, or want to, you are exactly who we recruit.
QuantumRecruits is an independent talent network. Company names appear to describe the field we serve and imply no partnership or endorsement. All names and marks are the property of their respective owners.
Role profiles
Read enough public team pages and the pattern is unmistakable: the same handful of scientific and engineering profiles recur at every serious quantum company, under a dozen different titles. This is that map. If you are hiring, it is the checklist of what your bench is missing. If you are a scientist, it is where your work already fits, whatever your current title says.
The recurring bench
Compiled from the published team pages and open postings of the control-layer and hardware companies: Qruise, Q-CTRL, QuantrolOx, IQM, Pasqal, Riverlane, QuEra, Quantum Machines, Zurich Instruments, Qblox. We describe the work rather than any company's job titles, because no two of them use the same words for it.
R-01
Designs and optimizes the waveforms that turn a noisy device into working qubits: optimal control, pulse shaping, gate tune-up. The most contested profile in the field, and the one with the shortest list of names.
Hardest to hire
R-02
Builds the model of the machine from its own measurements, then turns it into an error budget that says which component costs which fidelity. Sits between theory and the bench and speaks to both.
Deep pool, narrow fit
R-03
Codes, decoders, and fault-tolerant architecture. Splits into a theory side and a real-time decoding side that is closer to hardware engineering than to physics, and the two rarely live in one person.
Fastest-growing demand
R-04
Measures what the machine actually does, defines the metrics the roadmap is judged on, and finds the limitation before marketing does. Quietly decides which claims a company can defend.
Undervalued, decisive
R-05
Turns the physicists' notebooks into something other people can run: experiment frameworks, SDKs, compilation, simulators, tests. The role that decides whether the science ships or stays in a repository.
Broadest pool
R-06
The signal chain: microwave generation, arbitrary waveforms, readout, timing, and the firmware underneath. Rarely arrives from quantum; arrives from radar, telecoms, or scientific instrumentation.
Cross-industry hire
R-07
Keeps the machine cold and stable: dilution refrigerators, wiring, vacuum, thermal budgets, and the standards the next system inherits. Thin in job ads, decisive in whether anything runs.
Scarce, non-substitutable
R-08
Takes the stack onto somebody else's machine and makes it work: calibration on unfamiliar hardware, integration, incident resolution, and the workshop that teaches their team to run it.
Rising with installs
Compiled from companies' own published team pages and job postings, August 2026, and deliberately worded as descriptions of the work rather than copies of anyone's job titles. These are role archetypes, not individuals: no person, employer, or profile is described here. Company names identify the sources of the pattern and imply no relationship with QuantumRecruits.
Recognize yourself in one of them? Submit a candidacy and name the code.
Current searches
Every search below is active and client-approved for posting, with the compensation band and pipeline stage shown. Most of our work never appears here: confidential mandates move through the network directly.
Showing 9 of 9 live searches
QR-101
Full-stack superconducting platform · Series C · Confidential
Own the coherence roadmap across a 100-plus qubit device family, from materials screening to tune-up automation.
QR-102
Hardware scale-up · Post-Series B · Confidential
Keep a growing fleet of dilution refrigerators cold through a facility expansion, and write the wiring standards the next machines inherit.
QR-103
Fault-tolerance program · Public company · Confidential
Take a qLDPC decoder from preprint to production benchmark, working directly with the hardware team.
QR-104
Full-stack startup · Series B · Confidential
Build and lead a twelve-person compiler and runtime team through the jump from demos to a supported product.
QR-105
Neutral-atom platform · Series A · Confidential
Design the arbitrary waveform and readout chain for the next machine generation, then make it manufacturable.
QR-106
Industrial R&D group · Confidential
Resource estimation and algorithm design for molecular simulation, with a direct line to experimental partners.
QR-107
Photonic platform · Growth stage · Confidential
PIC design and cryo-compatible packaging for single-photon sources and detectors.
QR-108
Cloud platform · Public company · Confidential
Own the roadmap from access tiers to error-mitigated primitives. Late stage: register interest for similar mandates.
QR-109
National testbed program · Confidential
Entanglement distribution over deployed metropolitan fiber across the New York corridor. Part lab, part field.
Live in the market
Openings published by the companies themselves, listed because a candidate deserves the whole picture rather than only our own mandates. We hold no brief on these and earn nothing from them: apply directly, or ask us what the team is actually like before you do.
IQM Quantum Computers · Munich
IQM Quantum Computers · Munich
IQM Quantum Computers · Munich or Espoo, hybrid
IQM Quantum Computers · Munich
Pasqal · neutral atoms, Pulser stack
Pasqal · QPU performance and validation
Riverlane · Cambridge and US; a quantum background is not required for many of them
QuEra Computing · check their careers page for the current posting
Checked August 15, 2026, against each company's own careers page. Postings move fast, so treat this as a pointer and not a live feed; if a link has gone stale, the company's careers page is the source of truth. Company names appear to describe published openings and imply no relationship with QuantumRecruits.
Recently filled
A few mandates that closed in the last quarter, and how long they took.
QR-092
Munich · On-site
Filled in 19 days
QR-087
Bay Area · Hybrid
Filled in 31 days
QR-081
Remote · US time zones
Filled in 24 days
Hiring confidentially? Write to search@quantumrecruits.com. Unlisted mandates are our default, not the exception.
For scientists
Confidential, global, and free for candidates, always. Here is what working with a recruiter who can actually read your papers looks like.
For scientists & engineers
Employers subscribe to our access; we are never paid a percentage of your package. That means nothing we advise you about compensation is shaped by our own invoice, and you never pay us anything.
Exploring industry from a faculty post, or moving between rival labs: nobody hears your name until you decide they should.
A map of where your exact expertise is in demand right now, including roles that are never advertised and reach the market only through networks like ours.
Real salary and equity benchmarks for quantum roles across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, so you negotiate from data, not guesswork.
End-to-end support with O-1, EB-1, EU Blue Card, and global mobility, for you and your family, handled with the employer.
Offer, equity, start-up packages, publication rights, and IP terms: we stay in the room until the details are right.
We help you frame papers, code, and instrumentation as the commercial track record they actually are.
Disciplines
Quantum computing is not one field. It is sixteen fields that have to work at the same time. We recruit across all of them, because the teams that win are built across all of them.
Working between fields, or on something that is not on this list yet? Even better. Tell us in the form.
Five minutes now. A personal reply within five working days.
For companies
The teams that win quantum are built, not posted for. Peer-level vetting, mapped talent pools, and a commercial model with no percentage in it.
For labs & companies
For some quantum specializations, the realistic candidate pool worldwide is a few dozen people. Finding them is not a job posting. It is a search.
From staff scientists to CTO, Head of Quantum, and founding teams, run discreetly and to a deadline, for a flat monthly fee rather than a cut of the package.
Who exists, where they are, what they have published, and what it would take to move them. A fixed-price deliverable that keeps its value even if you never hire.
Screening led by PhD scientists: publications, patents, code, and references reviewed by people who can tell a contribution from a co-authorship.
Structured postdoc-to-industry conversion, university partnerships, and first-industry-hire coaching for research-heavy candidates.
Split appointments, secondments, and day-rate scientists, so a specialist who exists in a pool of twelve can still work on your problem.
Global reach with relocation and employer-of-record options, so the best candidate is never off-limits for being on another continent.
Or write to search@quantumrecruits.com
From the other side of the table
“They found us the cryogenics lead we had chased for a year. Three weeks, one shortlist, done. Then we kept the slot open and hired two more engineers on the same monthly fee.”
“The first recruiter who did not need our glossary. They understood why our error correction hire could not just be a strong C++ engineer, and screened accordingly.”
“Half their value was telling us when we were wrong: about the level, the band, and the pitch. We make no senior hire without them now.”
The model
Every search firm in quantum charges a percentage of the salary of whoever they place. That single convention creates every problem worth naming: it rewards volume over fit, it quietly rewards higher offers, and it prices out exactly the young hardware companies who need scarce people most. We removed the percentage entirely.
One subscription per active search slot. Hire one person from it or four, at any level: the price does not move. Pause any month, cancel with thirty days.
We earn nothing extra when you pay more, so we are the only party at the table with no stake in the offer. When our data says a band is inflated, we say so.
Talent mapping is a fixed-price engagement with a real deliverable you own, hire or not: every person on earth who could do the job, ranked, with mobility and compensation reality.
When a specialization has twelve people worldwide, exclusive full-time hiring is often impossible. We broker split appointments, secondments, and day-rate arrangements so scarce specialists can serve more than one program.
A fixed share of every access fee goes into a pool paid out to network members whose referral led to a hire. Quantum is a village that already knows everyone. The village should be paid for it.
If someone we placed leaves inside twelve months, you get free access months, not a clause about a replacement search. Our cost of failure is our own time.
Three ways in
Start with intelligence, subscribe to capacity, or borrow expertise by the day. Each one stands alone, and each one credits into the next.
01 · Diagnose
Fixed fee
Four weeks · one deliverable
Before you hire, know what exists. A named, ranked map of the global pool for a specific role, built by scientists who read the field.
02 · Hire
Flat monthly
Per active slot · unlimited hires
An embedded quantum recruiting team for as long as you need one. No percentage, no per-hire cliff, no incentive to inflate anything.
03 · Borrow
Day rate
Fractional · shared · interim
For the phases where you need judgment more than headcount, and for specializations too scarce for anyone to hire exclusively.
Candidates never pay, at any stage, in any arrangement. Access and Capacity are quoted per engagement after a scoping call, because a fluxonium readout slot and a product hire are not the same problem. Nothing here is a percentage of anyone's salary.
How we compare
Contingency and retained search differ in when you pay. Both still price a hire as a fraction of a salary. That is the part we changed.
| Contingency | Fully retained | QuantumRecruits | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you buy | A placement | A search process | Access to the field, by the month |
| How you pay | 15 to 25% of salary, on success | 25 to 33% of salary, in thirds, regardless of outcome | Flat monthly fee, or a fixed price for a map |
| If the offer goes up | Recruiter earns more | Recruiter earns more | We earn exactly the same |
| Second and third hire | Full fee again | New engagement | Included in the same slot |
| If you do not hire | Nothing, and nothing learned | Fees paid, thin report | You keep the map you commissioned |
| Commitment | None, and no priority either | Locked for the engagement | Pause any month, cancel on thirty days |
| Scarce specializations | Declined as unfillable | Long, exclusive, often unfilled | Fractional and shared arrangements |
| If the hire leaves | Partial rebate, sometimes | Replacement search, billed | Free access months, no argument |
| Who else gets paid | The firm | The firm | A referral dividend to the network |
Or review the searches we are running now.
10 mK · Base temperature
Wherever you are in the world, whatever your discipline. Reviewed personally, answered personally, held in strict confidence.
Prefer email? Write to talents@quantumrecruits.com. Hiring instead? See for labs & companies.
Your mail app should now be open with the candidacy addressed to talents@quantumrecruits.com, everything you typed already in the body. Attach your CV and press send. Nothing opened? Open the prefilled email.
A recruiter who reads your field will answer personally within five working days. Everything you send stays confidential.