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  • Preprint — not yet peer-reviewed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 honestly.

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 honest 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