Head of IT in Cambridge

Cambridge, UK | Full-time | Permanent | Hybrid

Salary: £100,000 to £130,000 DOE

About Us

Riverlane’s mission is to master quantum error correction (QEC) and unlock a new age of human progress. From advances in material and climate science to complex chemistry simulation for new drug design, quantum computers will help humanity solve some of its most important challenges. Riverlane is the world leader in QEC technology. Having raised more than $125M in funding to date to accelerate our cutting-edge R&D in quantum error correction (QEC), Riverlane partners with many of the world’s leading quantum hardware providers and government agencies to make fault-tolerant quantum computing a reality.

The Role

As Head of IT, you will own and lead everything that keeps Riverlane's technology estate running — from corporate IT operations to the development and management of our on-premises high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role that sits at the intersection of enterprise IT and deep technical infrastructure, making it uniquely exciting for someone who thrives in fast-moving, engineering-led organisations. You will be Riverlane's most senior IT leader, setting strategy, owning delivery, and working closely with engineering, operations, security, and finance stakeholders to ensure our infrastructure is world-class, secure, and ready to scale.

Key Responsibilities

• Corporate IT

• Own and evolve the company-wide IT strategy, policies, and roadmap, ensuring alignment with Riverlane's growth trajectory and security requirements.
• Manage and continuously improve all corporate IT systems, including endpoint management, identity and access management (IAM), collaboration tools, SaaS platforms, and networking.
• Lead IT procurement, vendor management, and licence optimisation across all tools and platforms.
• Ensure robust IT support processes are in place, maintaining high availability and responsiveness for a technically demanding workforce of scientists and engineers.
• Own and develop Riverlane's information security posture, including policies, risk management, access controls, and compliance with relevant standards (e.g. ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials).
• Lead the IT aspects of any audits, due diligence processes, or regulatory requirements.
• Manage and mentor any IT support staff, building out the team as the company grows.

• Take ownership of Riverlane's on-premises high-performance computer, serving as the primary technical authority for its architecture, performance, reliability, and availability.
• Lead the DevOps strategy for the HPC environment, including CI/CD pipelines, containerisation, workload scheduling (e.g. Slurm, Kubernetes), and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Collaborate closely with quantum scientists and hardware engineers to understand their compute requirements and translate them into robust, scalable infrastructure solutions.
• Define and enforce best practices around HPC system security, backup, disaster recovery, and capacity planning.
• Evaluate and integrate new technologies to extend the HPC capability as Riverlane's research scales toward MegaQuOp and beyond.
• Act as the bridge between the engineering/science teams and the IT function, translating complex research infrastructure requirements into well-managed, reliable systems.

Essential

• Proven experience in a senior IT leadership role, ideally within a technology-driven, engineering or research-intensive organisation.
• Strong hands-on technical background in Linux systems administration, networking, and cloud/on-prem infrastructure.
• Demonstrable experience managing or supporting HPC environments, including job scheduling systems, storage architectures (e.g. GPFS, Lustre, NFS), and cluster management.
• Experience owning DevOps tooling and practices: CI/CD, containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible), and version control systems.
• Solid understanding of information security principles and experience implementing or managing security frameworks.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills — comfortable engaging with scientists, engineers, executives, and external vendors alike.
• A proactive, ownership-oriented mindset with the ability to both set strategy and roll up your sleeves.

Desirable

• Experience working in a quantum computing, semiconductor, HPC centre, or national laboratory environment.
• Familiarity with FPGA-based systems or real-time processing infrastructure.
• Experience scaling IT operations in a high-growth startup or scaleup.
• Knowledge of relevant compliance frameworks (ISO 27001, NIST, Cyber Essentials Plus).
• Experience with GPU cluster management or similar specialist compute environments.

Benefits

• A comprehensive benefits package that includes private medical insurance, life insurance, a contributory pension scheme and annual bonus.
• Equity, so that our team can share in the long-term success of Riverlane.
• 28 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave.
• A diverse work environment that brings together experts in many fields (including software and hardware development, quantum information theory, physics and maths) and over 20 different nationalities.
• A learning environment that encourages individual, team and company growth and learning, including a regular programme of learning events and an annual training and conference budget.
• An award-winning employer with 4.7 rating on Glassdoor.

Everyone is welcome at Riverlane. We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from eligible and suitably qualified candidates regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender reassignment, religion or belief, sexual orientation, marital or civil partnership status, or pregnancy and maternity.