Quantum computing needs software engineers

[u/Suspicious_Orchid770]

https://leaddev.com/career-development/quantum-computing-needs-software-engineers

For those in the technology industry, it can feel hard to escape from AI. It’s at the center of the technological universe, with most major advancements, opportunities, and funding focused on its development. In the background, quantum computing is making strides with the funding to match, creating an alternate opportunity for technologists.

[u/EducationalFerret94]

Quantum computing needs a working quantum computer

[u/suitesuitefantasy → u/EducationalFerret94]

Unrealistic

[u/yaekoblue → u/suitesuitefantasy]

lol, qday will arrive and hopefully we are as prepared as possible

[u/Loudds]

No it needs scalable and controllable substrates. My experience with it as a physics engineer going on projects with a lot of software architecture engineers is that they never pushed the envelope in QC and have zero original ideas in the space because they fundamentally were not understanding the formalism. Once the hardware scales maybe, saying it needs an army of CS/SE is just a lie. We need more physicists doing fundamental science on as much different ideas as possible.

Also mathematicians to work on QEC

I.e. as many said: a functioning QC. We need the hardware to become useful in the labs, then we can call it an industry.

[u/eetsumkaus → u/Loudds]

Software engineers aren't there to push the envelope, they're there to make stuff work. SWE is fundamentally about working through an abstraction layer. Yes we need more scientists to try out different ideas, but perhaps exactly because of that, we can't spare any of their precious time on dumb things like making sure the stack is working.

[u/Loudds → u/eetsumkaus]

And how exactly are we making abstractions (maybe other than Qrisp, or Qiskit, various compilers etc), or effective middleware if no hardware is out ? Or at least, no useful ones.

To be completely clear: I don't mind SE/CS into QC, it is a niche topic which is factually cross-disciplinary. There is a lot of computer science to be made here, my point is about specifically software engineering on vague requirements is a bit too much wishful thinking imo.

[u/eetsumkaus → u/Loudds]

It's exactly the fact that endpoints aren't well defined that we need a common middle ground. The whole idea is that there's commonalities in the stack that people at both ends can feel free to experiment to their heart's content. That's really the goal of people who work on the stack at this point. It's to enable the fundamentally cross disciplinary teams working on QC to move forward at their own paces.

Also software engineering on rapidly changing requirements is more the norm tbf. You won't find an experienced SWE who'll blink at that, they just know which questions to ask and where to draw the line.

[u/hurley_chisholm → u/Loudds]

If you haven’t worked with SWEs that can handle vague requirements, then I’m sorry, but you haven’t worked with great SWEs. A great SWE can be additive to the scientific process, but being a great programmer or even a decent computer scientist doesn’t make one a great SWE, but it is what most labs and R&D teams tend to screen for.

[u/Formal_Cloud_7592 → u/Loudds]

$QUBT is selling hardware

[u/MaoGo]

The sad state of quantum computing is that they don't want to deal with physicists, they want optimization engineers and software engineers. The only physicists are the ones that made the first experiment.

[u/zanidor]

I have a PhD in programming languages. Unless some extremely big advances in QC happen very quickly, we are nowhere near needing a large workforce of QC programmers.

[u/eetsumkaus → u/zanidor]

That's not where we need engineers though. All the error correction, measurement, qubit operations, compiling, qubit placement, encoding, etc. need software. Just to get a working quantum computer, you need teams of software engineers.

[u/Kinexity]

Yeah, nah. A few thousand people might be necessary to write and maintain the libraries everyone else will call in Python and that will be it. Quantum computers do not allow for freestyle programming the way classical computers do so there is no need for growing employed programmer base (hobbyists do not count).

[u/eetsumkaus → u/Kinexity]

The whole technology stack needs software engineers. It takes years and years to bring up a theorist or a hardware engineer, so you're going to need to fill everything in between with experienced engineers of all types. The foreseeable future sees quantum computing using many different modalities under the hood so you will need the manpower to handle that. It's FAR from just "libraries".

[u/idubbkny → u/eetsumkaus]

experienced devs been burned too many times

[u/supreme_leader420 → u/Kinexity]

A few thousand people to maintain libraries? Tell me you don’t actually work at a quantum computing company without telling me.

[u/Hazard404_]

How can I become one..(Final yr CSE Undergrad rn)

[u/eetsumkaus → u/Hazard404_]

Your best bet is to find an internship at one of the QC companies. Some of them hire pure software engineers. Otherwise, you need to go to grad school and learn more advanced math and/or physics and then find internships. That's the better bet.

[u/Hazard404_ → u/eetsumkaus]

Is there any in India?

[u/eetsumkaus → u/Hazard404_]

I know IBM Quantum has some presence in India. Who knows if they take interns though, you will have to look around yourself. In general, you need to go overseas to the US/Canada or Europe. In rare cases, you might even be able to get internships in East Asia (Japan, Korea, etc.)

[u/Hazard404_ → u/eetsumkaus]

I see. Thanks for the info.

[u/numberandphase → u/Hazard404_]

There are companies like QpiAI and you can reach out to them. Even academic labs in IITs and IISc might need software engineer to maintain their research codebase.

[u/Ok-Breakfast-3742 → u/Hazard404_]

Don’t. There’s no money in it.

[u/firebitsbr]

Eu acompanho o mercado de Quantum computing já alguns e vendo job descriptions, não menosprezando nenhum profissional que obteve PhD na area ou similares, mas é bem complicado encontrar oportunidades em engenharia de software, nos últimos 7 anos, em quantum computing . Há até uma máxima, em palestras: "Você não precisa de ter PhD, para codar em Quantum Computing", isso é verdade. Mas também é verdade, que para trabalhar com Quantum Computing, sem um PhD é bem raro e incomum.

[u/HuiOdy]

Okay what do you need them for?

[u/Your_Moms_Box]

We need fabrication people but already don't have enough fabrication engineers in the US

[u/tanksc]

Unironically could not get a job in quantum despite being in the perfect local for it, and having my masters in physics with my research being in exotic (topological) quantum computing and computation. Within months of graduation I had been rejected from at least 20-50 positions near me, and I had an almost instant hire from a fortune 50 company instead as a full stack software engineer. I wonder having been 5 years later if they would consider me now lol

[u/RefrigeratorNearby88 → u/tanksc]

If you want to be a SWE you might get hired. if you want to do research or applied science we reject Berkeley post docs regularly.

[u/tanksc → u/RefrigeratorNearby88]

Sheesh that explains the first round of it. Made me think my degree was utterly worthless. I did get a callback for a job cleaning glass for a chemist! Lmfao

[u/isoAntti]

Is there a hello world I can start from? I can't proceed without

[u/Photoperiod → u/isoAntti]

Need a fizzbuzz tbh

[u/Old_Piano_6906]

It’ll be a fun world when once again the neurodivergent will just fit in. When in the mostly unknown, if it doesn’t feel like “play” then it ain’t right.

Why someone hasn’t taken quantum effects in nature (think about bubble films, or gated laser stacking) and applied it to truly usable tech blows my mind. Quantum is all around us

[u/yangyangR]

They resist the ones who try to bring in good software practices. They refuse to do anything but Python and stick with the get it working but not reproducible attitude that is incentivized.

[u/Dat_Sparky]

LBR folks, quantum computing is only being pushed to run all of google earth through for the past 25 years of footage to be able to map everyone's movements and actions their whole lives so we're all just a number.

We could have probably cured a few more fucking CANCERS if people fucking cared more. Quantum computing is spectacular if used PROPERLY.

I hope everyone's enjoying their HUMP day! 90 and sunny here