Quantum Powerhouse

The field · careers

Careers in quantum computing

A small, high barrier, well compensated specialist market, roughly sixteen thousand people worldwide, not a hiring wave. What follows is what the data says, which roles exist, who hires, and what on this site counts as evidence for each role.

  • Verified, published result
  • Vendor reported result
  • Projection, roadmap target
  • Opinion, named, dated
  • Estimate, with caveats
  • Contested, disputed in the record
  • Preprint, not yet peer reviewed

The pure play quantum workforce is ~16,500 people worldwide

Verified, published result

QED-C's State of the Global Quantum Industry 2026 (data as of end 2025, published 14 April 2026) counts 16,482 pure play quantum workers, up 14% year over year, with 8,261 new quantum related openings in 2025 (+11%). The market it serves was $1.9B in 2025. For scale: that is a mid sized software company's headcount, spread across the entire industry.

Degrees: employers hire across bachelor's, master's and PhD: except for the most specialized roles

Verified, published result

A survey of 57 quantum companies (Hughes et al., IEEE Transactions on Education, 2022) found that 'except for the highly specific jobs, companies … are looking for a range of degree levels … from bachelors to masters to PhDs', and that the broader roles 'require a range of skills, most of which are not quantum related'. Read that as: algorithms and device physics research skews PhD; software, systems, applications and cryptography engineering are reachable with a strong portfolio.

Compensation: a US 'Quantum Software Engineer' averages ~$208k on Glassdoor: from 16 reports

Estimate, with caveats

Glassdoor's May 2026 figure for Quantum Software Engineer in the United States is $208,435 (range $168k, $263k), based on sixteen anonymous submissions; its 'Quantum Computing Engineer' figure is $164,333. Treat these as a rough ceiling signal, not a market rate: aggregator data in a 16,000-person field is thin, self selected, and skewed toward large US employers. Offers vary enormously by PhD, employer, and equity.

Seven roles: and the proof on this site

Degree notes follow the Hughes et al. survey above: specialized research skews PhD; engineering roles hire across degree levels.

Quantum software engineer

Compilers, transpilers, SDKs, simulators, control software; the layer between circuits and hardware.

needs · Strong classical software engineering, linear algebra, one or more SDKs (Qiskit, Cirq, Braket), compilers/IRs, testing discipline.

degree: BSc/MSc common; portfolio driven

Quantum algorithms researcher

Designs and analyzes algorithms, resource estimates, variational methods, complexity arguments.

needs · Graduate level quantum information theory, complexity, numerical methods; publication record.

degree: PhD typical

Quantum error correction / error mitigation specialist

Codes, decoders, thresholds, syndrome extraction; on NISQ hardware, mitigation techniques like ZNE.

needs · Stabilizer formalism, decoding algorithms, noise modeling, statistics; for FTQC roles, deep theory.

degree: PhD typical for research; MSc possible for mitigation engineering

Quantum hardware / device engineer

Qubit fabrication, cryogenics, lasers and traps, control electronics, characterization.

needs · Experimental physics or EE, cleanroom/cryo/optics experience, measurement skills.

degree: PhD typical; MSc for test & control roles

Quantum classical hybrid systems engineer

Orchestration of QPU + HPC/cloud workflows, runtime services, queueing, noise aware compilation pipelines.

needs · Distributed systems, cloud, Python/C++, CI/CD, familiarity with vendor runtimes (Qiskit Runtime, Braket).

degree: BSc/MSc common

Quantum applications scientist

Maps domain problems (chemistry, materials, finance) onto hybrid algorithms and benchmarks them.

needs · Domain science + quantum algorithms; rigorous benchmarking against classical baselines.

degree: PhD typical in the domain science

Post quantum cryptography engineer (adjacent, growing)

Inventories quantum vulnerable crypto, plans and executes migrations to ML-KEM/ML-DSA, crypto agility.

needs · Applied cryptography, protocols (TLS, PKI), secure software engineering; no quantum hardware knowledge required.

degree: BSc/MSc common; the most accessible entry point

Who is hiring

Organizations with active quantum programs; links go to their official quantum pages. Openings change weekly, the QED-C report above counted 8,261 in 2025.

The summary

The market is real but small; the barrier is real but not uniform. Research and device roles are PhD territory. Software, systems, applications engineering and post quantum cryptography hire across degrees and reward demonstrated work, which is what this site is: a transpiler, a VQE, an error mitigation toolkit, a verified research study, a published pytest plugin. If you are choosing an entry point, post quantum cryptography is the most accessible and the most immediately in demand, because its deadline is already on the calendar.

See also