Senior AI Software Engineer (US)

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with substantial recent experience personally writing and shipping production code.
• Strong full-stack engineering fundamentals
• Demonstrated experience with knowledge graphs, ontologies, RAG, retrieval systems, graph databases, vector databases, or related technologies.
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, and maintaining production-quality, user-facing web applications.
• Experience making architectural decisions and evaluating technical tradeoffs across frontend, backend, data, infrastructure, and application integrations.
• Experience using AI tools for engineering across development, testing, deployment and observability.
• Strong understanding of UI/UX principles and product usability, with the ability to translate complex information into intuitive user experiences.
• Ability to rapidly prototype technical approaches and determine when to prioritize speed, simplicity, scalability, or long-term maintainability.
• Ability to work autonomously, manage competing priorities, and deliver results with minimal oversight.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, including the ability to explain technical decisions to both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Ability and enthusiasm to learn unfamiliar technical domains as needed; prior quantum computing experience is not required, but an interest in scientific applications is nice to have
• Comfortable and familiar with working in a startup environment

• Knowledge graphs and ontologies
• RAG/retrieval systems
• Graph databases / Cypher (Neo4j)
• Vector databases (e.g. Pinecone, Weaviate, Milvus, FAISS)

• React

• Python
• AI-assisted development (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, Cursor)

Zapata Quantum is shaping the future of quantum computing: setting the standards for what’s viable, valuable, and worth building.

The Company powers quantum applications across cryptography, pharmaceuticals, finance, materials discovery, defense, and beyond, translating cutting-edge research into real-world impact.

Zapata is the only organization to have contributed across every technical area of DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking program, giving it a uniquely comprehensive view of what it takes to make quantum computing work in practice.

Now restructured and sharply focused, Zapata Quantum stands alone as the only publicly traded, pure-play quantum software company fully dedicated to unlocking quantum’s commercial potential.

We’re rebuilding at a pivotal moment for the industry—bringing together a team that will help define how quantum delivers value in the real world, with the opportunity for meaningful ownership as we shape the commercial path forward.