Senior Manager, Programs Group in Cambridge

The Programs team ensures our external and internal research projects are delivered predictably, transparently, and in alignment with customer needs and internal priorities. Working closely with research leads, solutions architects, and commercial teams, the group provides the structure and clarity needed to turn scientific work into well-run projects. As the Senior Manager, Programs Group, you will manage your own portfolio of complex scientific projects while shaping how the wider team delivers. You will use your technical literacy to translate scientific objectives into clear plans, manage the flow of work across multiple research teams, and ensure that progress, risks, and decisions are visible to both customers and internal leadership. Alongside your own delivery responsibilities, you will allocate resources across the Programs team, coach team members, and maintain consistent delivery discipline. You will also strengthen how projects are executed across the group by defining and maintaining the team's approach to leadership reporting, ensuring high-quality and consistent updates. In addition, you will sustain strong communication channels across research, commercial, and customer teams, and run retrospectives that drive continuous improvement in both individual projects and team practices.

Responsibilities

• Ensure all internal and external research and delivery projects are well defined, with clear objectives, scope, milestones, success criteria, ownership, and governance, and that progress is reported in a consistent and appropriate manner to senior leadership.
• Design, deploy, and operate forecasting and capacity-planning systems to ensure sufficient resources are available to deliver customer projects alongside core research programs, proactively escalating hiring and resourcing needs with adequate lead time.
• Ensure the organization uses appropriate tools and systems for project tracking, resource management, and reporting, and that these are adopted and used consistently across teams.
• Build and maintain systems and processes to support financial and accounting requirements, including allocation of effort and working hours across projects, in close coordination with finance and operations teams.
• Establish and enforce effective scope management and change-control processes to prevent uncontrolled scope creep while enabling informed trade-offs where strategically necessary.
• Ensure project risks, dependencies, and delivery issues are identified early, escalated appropriately, and actively managed so that corrective actions are taken in a timely manner.
• Personally lead selected high-priority, high-complexity, or strategically critical programs in addition to overall management responsibilities.
• Provide line management for the Programs team, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, performance management, and career development.
• Act as the primary point of contact for questions related to project status, delivery commitments, and customer programs, ensuring clear and timely communication with internal leaders and external stakeholders as appropriate.

Must haves

• Masters degree in quantum computing, physics, computer science, or related field.
• 5+ years managing complex research programs with successful outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience leading or mentoring project or program managers in a technical environment.

We value

• PhD in quantum computing, physics, computer science, or related field.
• Experience working with or exposure to quantum technologies.
• Experience managing customer relationships, with a track record of delivering successful and complex projects.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence without formal authority.
• Excellent verbal, written, and presentation skills; able to communicate complex ideas clearly and persuasively.
• Strong organizational skills, with the ability to manage multiple priorities and stakeholders.

What is in it for you?

Working alongside a highly talented team, with leading names in the quantum computing industry. We offer a highly competitive package, equity, 28 days of paid holiday (in addition to public holidays), a workplace pension, a positive approach to flexible working and enhanced parental and adoption benefits.

About Us

Quantinuum is the world leader in quantum computing. The company's quantum systems deliver the highest performance across all industry benchmarks. Quantinuum's over 650 employees, including 400+ scientists and engineers, across the US, UK, Germany, and Japan, are driving the quantum computing revolution. By uniting best-in-class software with high-fidelity hardware, our integrated full-stack approach is accelerating the path to practical quantum computing and scaling its impact across multiple industries. By joining Quantinuum, you'll be at the forefront of this transformative revolution, shaping the future of quantum computing, pushing the limits of technology, and making the impossible possible.