Program Manager at IQM Quantum Computers, London, GB. A mid-level full time position in the Engineering team, listed under business operations.
IQM’s work is built on funded contracts, and each one comes with milestones, evidence reviews, claims and auditors. At the same time, our engineers are building toward IQM’s own product roadmap and serving customers. These three sets of commitments draw on the same people and the same hardware, and they don’t always point the same way. As Program Manager, you hold the single view of all of it: what we’ve committed to, to whom, by when, and at what cost. You keep that picture consistent with our strategic, commercial and technology roadmaps, and you’re the person who sees a collision coming months before it lands. You won’t have direct reports. You deliver through workstream leads, engineers and physicists in other functions, and you set day-to-day priorities within the capacity we’ve committed. Your influence comes from the quality of your plan and the credibility you build, not from a reporting line. You’ll work closely with legal, IP, commercial and finance, with our subcontractors and academic partners, and with the exec team.
What you’ll actually do
- Run milestone delivery end to end. You own the contracted schedule, the success criteria and the baseline cost behind each milestone. Each quarter you assemble the technical and commercial evidence, present it for review, secure sign-off and trigger the claim. Payment depends on that evidence holding up, so it has to be right the first time.
- Keep the critical path honest. On a hardware-plus-software program, physical build, long-lead procurement and integration set the schedule. You track procurement and manage subcontractors and academic partners against defined deliverables and resource commitments. When an estimate looks optimistic, you challenge it.
- Make the risk register a working tool. Every risk has a named owner and a live mitigation. When commitments conflict, you bring the exec team options and a recommendation, not just the problem.
Requirements
- 8+ years running complex technical programs where hardware and software come together, including at least one of £5m or more with reporting obligations to an external funder or customer. You know milestone-based contracts from the inside: defining milestones, building acceptance evidence, controlling cost and schedule, and managing subcontractors and academic partners where IP is sensitive.
- Familiarity with the UK funding system and what assessors and auditors expect to see.
- Enough technical depth to read a quantum computing system architecture and challenge an estimate. A physical sciences or engineering degree, or equivalent working depth.
- Equal credibility with physicists and with funders, auditors and executives. You stay calm under scrutiny, your written reports survive assessor review, and you use PM software and AI tools to automate the routine parts of the job.
- Bonus: Delivery experience with Innovate UK, SBRI, Contracts for Innovation, or DSIT, NQCC, STFC or DSTL programs, especially if you’ve helped win a staged public sector competition.
- Bonus: A background in quantum technologies, superconducting systems, cryogenics, large-scale scientific instrumentation or HPC/data centres, ideally including taking a research-stage system into an operated service with uptime and support obligations.
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