Senior Quantum Applied Research Scientist, Calibration and Decoding

NVIDIA NVIDIA · Semiconductors · Redmond, WA +2 · Remote

Research Scientist at NVIDIA focusing on developing AI models for quantum system calibration and decoding. This role involves building physics-informed synthetic data generation pipelines, developing surrogate models of quantum hardware, and architecting real-time AI systems. The work also includes applying reinforcement learning and online learning methods for optimization, with a strong emphasis on GPU acceleration and collaboration across Product, Engineering, and Applied Research teams to advance fault-tolerant quantum computing.

What you'd actually do

  1. Research and develop open AI models for quantum system calibration to advance the state of the art and empower the quantum community to build on shared foundations.
  2. Build physics-informed synthetic data generation pipelines that leverage quantum device models, noise channels, and Hamiltonian characterization to produce high-quality training data for upstream calibration and decoding model development.
  3. Develop surrogate models of quantum hardware that capture device physics and drift behavior, enabling rapid performance prediction and parameter inference without full experimental overhead.
  4. Architect performant real-time AI systems that jointly account for calibration state and decoding requirements, co-designing model latency, throughput, and update cadence to meet the demands of fault-tolerant feedback loops.
  5. Apply reinforcement learning and online learning methods to calibration policy optimization, enabling models that improve continuously from hardware feedback and generalize across device families and modalities.

Skills

Required

  • Masters degree in Physics, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Applied Mathematics, or a related field (Ph.D. strongly preferred); or equivalent experience.
  • 8+ years of combined experience and high impact in quantum systems and AI/ML research.
  • Hands-on expertise in machine learning and deep learning for science or physics, including model architecture design, training at scale, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
  • Strong background in quantum device physics and information science, including noise models, error mechanisms, and fault-tolerant quantum systems across one or more qubit modalities.
  • Broad understanding of quantum control, such as pulse-level hardware interfaces and classical feedback through software abstractions.
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

Nice to have

  • Hands-on experience developing learned calibration or decoding models and deploying them within real-time quantum control feedback loops, with direct awareness of latency and throughput constraints.
  • Deep expertise in reinforcement learning—including policy optimization, reward shaping, and sim-to-real transfer—applied to physical systems or closed-loop control problems.
  • Experience with physics-informed or generative approaches to synthetic data generation, including noise simulation, Hamiltonian learning, or data augmentation for scientific AI models.
  • Experience with large-scale model training and fine-tuning—including parameter-efficient methods (LoRA, QLoRA, adapters) and domain adaptation.
  • Proficiency with CUDA and NVIDIA GPU programming for accelerating quantum simulation, AI model training, or real-time inference workloads at scale.

What the JD emphasized

  • 8+ years of combined experience and high impact in quantum systems and AI/ML research
  • Hands-on expertise in machine learning and deep learning for science or physics, including model architecture design, training at scale, fine-tuning, and evaluation
  • Strong background in quantum device physics and information science, including noise models, error mechanisms, and fault-tolerant quantum systems across one or more qubit modalities
  • Broad understanding of quantum control, such as pulse-level hardware interfaces and classical feedback through software abstractions
  • Hands-on experience developing learned calibration or decoding models and deploying them within real-time quantum control feedback loops, with direct awareness of latency and throughput constraints
  • Deep expertise in reinforcement learning—including policy optimization, reward shaping, and sim-to-real transfer—applied to physical systems or closed-loop control problems
  • Experience with physics-informed or generative approaches to synthetic data generation, including noise simulation, Hamiltonian learning, or data augmentation for scientific AI models
  • Experience with large-scale model training and fine-tuning—including parameter-efficient methods (LoRA, QLoRA, adapters) and domain adaptation
  • Proficiency with CUDA and NVIDIA GPU programming for accelerating quantum simulation, AI model training, or real-time inference workloads at scale

Other signals

  • develops AI models for quantum systems
  • builds physics-informed synthetic data generation pipelines
  • develops surrogate models of quantum hardware
  • architects real-time AI systems for calibration and decoding
  • applies reinforcement learning and online learning to optimization