Location: Ottawa, ON (on-site)
Employment type: Full-time permanent
Salary range: $120,000 – $175,000 CAD per year; competitive salaries will be negotiated commensurate with experience — this range is a guideline
About Q-Block Computing: Q-Block Computing builds quantum systems that operate in the real world. The company develops quantum timing, quantum-secure communications, and quantum computing platforms engineered for the performance, reliability, and environmental resilience that mission-critical applications demand — systems designed to be deployed, maintained, and trusted by operators who cannot afford ambiguity about whether the technology works.
The long-term vision is deeper than any single platform. Q-Block is pursuing a mission to decode Nature's foundational model — to build instruments of sufficient precision and coherence that they become tools for understanding the physical universe at its most fundamental level. Commercialization and science reinforce each other by design.
About this role: The Technical Lead — Orchestration Control is the principal technical authority for the real-time control stack that drives Q-Block's quantum hardware platforms. The role owns the architecture, roadmap, and delivery of the orchestration layer that unifies firmware, infrastructure, and systems engineering into a coherent, deterministic, scalable control plane. It is a senior leadership position with responsibility for the technical integrity of a system that has to work end-to-end, not just in parts.
The successful candidate has depth across embedded firmware, real-time systems, networking, and application-layer software, and the judgment to make architectural decisions that hold up across all of those domains at once. They have shipped production hardware-software systems, have led engineers through the full arc from architecture to delivery, and know how to balance near-term delivery pressure against long-term architectural integrity without sacrificing either. The role reports to senior leadership and works closely with scientists, hardware engineers, software engineers, and external partners.
Responsibilities
- Define and own the technical architecture of the orchestration control stack spanning real-time firmware, middleware, networking, and application layers.
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Establish system-level performance specifications, including latency budgets, timing precision, throughput targets, and fault-tolerance requirements.
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Design the command, sequencing, and scheduling framework that coordinates arrays of control nodes to execute synchronized operations at nanosecond precision.
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Lead cross-team technical planning across firmware, infrastructure, and systems engineering; resolve interface conflicts and architectural trade-offs with clear, documented reasoning.
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Define and maintain the integration test strategy for the full control stack; own system-level acceptance criteria and the evidence behind them.
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Drive build-versus-buy decisions for middleware, real-time frameworks, and toolchain components.
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Recruit, mentor, and develop a high-performing engineering team; conduct architecture reviews, design critiques, and technical retrospectives that raise the standard of work across the group.
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Manage technical risk identification, mitigation, and escalation; lead root-cause analysis on system-level failures and ensure corrective actions are real rather than cosmetic.
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Collaborate with scientists, hardware engineers, and software teams to translate advanced and often ambiguous requirements into structured, executable control-system specifications.
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Contribute to technical proposals, program planning, roadmap development, and IP documentation.
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Represent Q-Block's control platform in discussions with partners, customers, and government stakeholders as appropriate, at a level of technical depth and clarity that earns trust.
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Contribute to a culture of ownership, rigor, and honest technical discussion across the engineering organization.
Required qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering Physics, Physics, or a closely related field; Master's or Ph.D. is an asset.
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10+ years of professional experience in embedded systems, real-time control, or distributed systems engineering, with at least 4 years in a technical leadership role.
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Demonstrated experience shipping production hardware-software systems, not exclusively research prototypes.
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Expert understanding of real-time systems: deterministic scheduling, latency analysis, hardware-software co-design, and multi-node synchronization.
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Broad technical range spanning embedded firmware, systems programming, networking, and application-layer software.
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Proven ability to lead and coordinate multi-disciplinary engineering teams through the full arc of architecture, design, delivery, and sustaining engineering.
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Excellent written and verbal communication; comfort presenting to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Preferred qualifications
- Experience architecting distributed control or data acquisition systems with strict timing requirements across multiple nodes and chassis.
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Hands-on familiarity with precision timing and frequency-reference systems, PTP, hardware-assisted synchronization, or comparable deterministic timing infrastructure.
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Experience integrating FPGA-based real-time processing into broader control architectures.
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Experience with HPC clustering, MPI-based orchestration, or comparable large-scale distributed computing environments.
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Track record of translating ambiguous research-stage requirements into structured engineering roadmaps with realistic risk and milestone plans.
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Experience in quantum technology, photonics, RF systems, radar, defense, aerospace, or scientific instrumentation.
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Experience working in regulated, security-sensitive, or defense-oriented engineering environments, including the documentation and process discipline those environments require.
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Experience recruiting and scaling technical teams in a deep-tech hardware company.
Security and compliance requirements
- Must be eligible to obtain and maintain Government of Canada security clearance, if required for assigned projects.
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Must be eligible to comply with requirements of the Controlled Goods Program, if required for assigned projects.
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Must be willing to participate in background screening, documentation, and compliance processes associated with security-sensitive work.
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Must be capable of operating in security-sensitive development environments and supporting compliance obligations associated with strategic or defense-related programs.
Personal attributes
- Strategic mindset paired with execution discipline — able to hold the architecture and the delivery in mind simultaneously.
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Strong attention to detail, authenticity, and a sense of responsibility in all tasks.
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Clear technical judgment and the confidence to make calls with incomplete information when the work requires it.
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Integrity and directness in dealings with team, leadership, and external stakeholders.
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Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to lead through influence as well as authority.
Benefits
- Extended health care (including dental and vision)
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Life insurance
Equal opportunity
Q-Block Computing is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to treating all employees and applicants with respect and dignity. Accommodations are available on request during the application and recruiting process.
Canadian citizens and permanent residents are strongly encouraged to apply. All interested candidates are encouraged to apply.
