Freelance High Performance Computing Engineer Jobs in Lake Forest, IL

Within Infleqtion's Quantum Computing Product Group, we are seeking a Senior Embedded Software Engineer to develop high-performance software systems that integrate classical computing resources with next-generation quantum hardware.

You will collaborate across quantum and classical domains to design, implement, and improve performance-critical software that orchestrates computation and data movement across CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, high-speed interconnects, and quantum systems. You will work closely with engineers and scientists across software and hardware boundaries to enable scalable quantum computing. Prior quantum-computing experience is valuable but not required; relevant backgrounds include high-performance computing, distributed systems, scientific, embedded, or other performance-critical computing applications.

• Designing, developing, testing, and maintaining high-quality software for high-performance quantum-classical computing systems.
• Building software components and interfaces that coordinate computation across classical and quantum computing resources.
• Developing systems that operate under demanding latency, throughput, bandwidth, and reliability requirements.
• Integrating software with heterogeneous computing platforms including CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, accelerators, and high-speed networking or interconnect technologies.
• Analyzing system performance, identifying bottlenecks, and improving scalability and reliability.
• Developing tools, benchmarks, test infrastructure, and observability capabilities for complex computing systems.
• Troubleshooting challenges spanning applications, operating systems, drivers, runtimes, networking, firmware, and hardware.
• Collaborating with software engineers, physicists, electrical engineers, systems engineers, external technology partners, and researchers to develop new computing capabilities.
• Writing maintainable, well-tested software and contributing to code reviews, design reviews, and technical documentation.
• Providing technical guidance and mentorship to other engineers.
• Rapidly evaluating and prototyping new technologies as the quantum and high-performance computing ecosystem evolves.

Requirements

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Physics, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 

• 5+ years of professional embedded software development experience, or equivalent demonstrated experience developing complex technical systems. 

• Strong programming experience in one or more systems or scientific-computing languages such as C++, C, Rust, or Python.

• Experience developing software for performance-critical, distributed, embedded, scientific, or high-performance computing systems. 

• Strong software engineering fundamentals, including testing, debugging, version control, code review, and maintainable software design. 

• Experience working in Linux environments. 

• Ability to diagnose complex problems across multiple layers of a computing system. 

• Strong understanding of computer systems fundamentals, such as concurrency, memory, networking, data movement, latency, and throughput. 

• Ability to work effectively across engineering disciplines and communicate complex technical concepts clearly. 

• You do not need previous quantum-computing experience to be successful in this role. We are looking for exceptional software and systems engineers who are excited to learn the quantum domain. 

Experience in one or more of the following areas is beneficial, but we do not expect candidates to have experience in all of them: 

• Ability to learn quickly, reason about complex computing systems and turn difficult requirements into reliable software 

• High-performance computing (HPC) systems, supercomputing environments, or HPC job schedulers such as Slurm or PBS. 

• GPU or accelerator programming, including CUDA or similar programming models. 

• Distributed systems, high-performance networking, or low-latency communication. 

• RoCE, RDMA, high-speed Ethernet, InfiniBand, or other high-bandwidth interconnect technologies. 

• Heterogeneous computing involving CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, or other accelerators. 

• Embedded Linux, firmware, device drivers, or hardware/software integration. 

• Performance profiling, benchmarking, modeling, and optimization. 

• Scientific computing, numerical computing, or research software. 

• Real-time or latency-sensitive systems. 

• FPGA-accelerated computing. 

• Quantum computing, quantum control, quantum error correction, or quantum software frameworks such as CUDA-Q. 

• Developing software in R&D or rapid-prototyping environments. 

• Collaborating with external scientific, academic, government, or technology partners. 

• Open-source software development.

Benefits

The targeted salary range for this role is $165,000 to $225,000 on an annualized basis plus eligibility to participate in our annual incentive plan. In addition to your base compensation, we offer a generous Total Rewards program which includes: 

• 100% company paid Employee coverage for Medical, Dental, Vision, and Short/Long Term Disability insurance programs 
• Employer funded Health Savings Account 
• Unlimited Paid Time Off 
• 401(k) Matching Programs 
• Company paid Life and AD&D Insurance 
• Flexible Healthcare Savings Account 
• Paid FMLA Leave 
• Paid Maternity/Paternity Leave 
• Employer Assistance Program 
• Student Loan Repayment

Here you have freedom to embrace your whole self: who you love, your gender identity and expression, skin color, age, appearance, disability, neurodiversity, DNA, military/veteran status, citizenship, and other factors that make up who you are. Your uniqueness is valued, welcomed, and appreciated here. We are dedicated to providing a positive workplace and base all employment decisions on your qualifications, performance, merits, as well as business needs. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. 

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export-control laws and regulations, including the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) and International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Any offer of employment may be conditioned on authorization to receive controlled software or technology without sponsorship for an export license. 

Travel of up to 10% may be required.