Deployment Infrastructure Engineer

As a Deployment Infrastructure Engineer, you will own the deployment of Rigetti's quantum systems – on-premises at research institutions and partner sites around the world, and on our cloud platform. You'll be the technical point of contact for each deployment, from site requirements through installation, validation, and handoff. You will work closely with Engineering Operations, Quantum Engineers, and other front facing teams to support Infrastructure and Information Technology (IT) responsibilities. As you grow in the role, you will take on additional responsibilities for core Infrastructure and information technology systems. 

This is a build role as much as an operate role. We've completed our first several deployments and have more systems heading to sites in the UK and Asia over the next year. You'll turn what we've learned into a repeatable, documented process, and be on site for critical installations.

You will work within the Infrastructure team to handle various DevOps and Infrastructure responsibilities, including CICD, AWS, On-Prem servers, etc. You'll work directly with customers and partners (gathering site requirements, setting expectations, and driving issues to resolution) while working with teams at home to prioritize what gets built. On-call rotation during installation will be required to ensure stability of the infrastructure.

The ideal candidate has significant hands-on experience in DevOps practices, Cloud Infrastructure, Networking, and modern deployment practices and has deployed systems into physical environments they don't fully control: customer sites, labs, data centers, or the field.You will work to improve the deployment process and support for the existing infrastructure. Experience with Site-reliability and observability is a strong plus. Practice with automation and application development is also a plus but not required. No quantum computing background is required, but curiosity about the technology is appreciated.

Core Responsibilities:

• Own the process for Deployment of Rigetti's quantum systems on both On-Premise and Cloud Platforms – including on-site installation and commissioning at customer and partner locations.
• Develop, optimize and deploy Infrastructure required for Rigetti's quantum systems as well as provide support and validation of deployments.
• Serve as the primary technical point of contact for customers during deployment: capture site requirements, surface hidden assumptions early, and drive issues to resolution across Rigetti teams.
• Work closely with Quantum Engineers and Engineering operations to test, validate and measure the deployed quantum systems, including the control systems that run alongside each fridge.
• Suggest and implement improvements to Cloud and on-prem infrastructure as well as the deployment process.
• Lead retrospectives on completed deployments and fold the lessons into the standard process.
• Provide Site-reliability support and lead root-cause analysis for incidents both during and after the deployment process.
• Partner with Engineering operations to create observability and reliability across Rigetti's systems.
• Partner with Internal software engineering to develop, maintain and improve deployment testing practices.
• Build and maintain test and staging environments that mirror customer deployments.
• Document process for deployment, site-reliability, and testing for standard operation procedures to ensure clear workflow across the various teams.

Growth/Stretch Responsibilities:

• Contribute to and improve Infrastructure and IT systems to improve Rigetti's core infrastructure.
• Handle role-based access control and access control requests for Rigetti.
• Help define what customers receive with a deployment: scope, support model, and escalation paths.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of relevant industry experience related to DevOps, Cloud, Site-Reliability Engineer, field or deployment engineering, or HPC / research computing operations.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and scaling tools (Karpenter, EKS, etc).
• 3-5 years experience with AWS (or similar Cloud providers).
• 3-5 years experience with Linux systems for server use.
• 1-2 years experience with Terraform (or similar Infrastructure as Code).
• 1-2 years experience with Observability tools (Grafana Cloud, Prometheus, Sentry).
• Significant experience in debugging production environments and providing support for resolution of incident
• On-call experience and support for production level applications, deployments, and/or devices.
• Hands on deployment experience to production environments as well as modern.
• Deployment strategies, including deployments into physical customer, lab, or field environments.
• Experience working directly with customers or external partners in a technical role.
• Willingness to travel internationally for installations and onboarding, including extended site visits.

Preferred Qualifications

• CCNA, CompTIA Network+, AWS certification, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience with load balancers, firewalls, VPNs, wireless networks, and network monitoring tools.
• Experience building or maintaining CI/CD pipelines end-to-end, beyond basic familiarity.
• Experience working in a data center, lab, manufacturing, semiconductor, research, or cleanroom environment.
• Bare metal provisioning experience with Windows and Linux devices.
• Experience installing or supporting scientific instruments, HPC systems, or semiconductor equipment at customer sites.
• Experience managing control or embedded hardware alongside the software that runs it.
• Background in quantum, physics, or other deep-tech environments (a plus, not required).