How to Apply to Rigetti Computing

9 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 13 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Rigetti is a full-stack superconducting quantum company with its own Fremont fab and Berkeley HQ, plus an Oxford UK site.
  • It trades as RGTI on NASDAQ after a March 2022 SPAC merger and has experienced significant share-price volatility, including penny-stock periods.
  • Headcount sits around 130 after 2023 layoffs, so individual contributors carry substantial scope across hardware, software, and federal programs.
  • Hiring uses Lever at jobs.lever.co/rigetti; technical roles typically require a PhD or unusually deep industry experience.
  • Customer base is heavily US federal (DOE, NIST, DOD, IARPA, USAF) with selected commercial pilots; expect federal contract rhythms and reporting.
  • Competition from IBM, Google, IonQ, Quantinuum, PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, QuEra, Pasqal, OQC, and D-Wave is intense and well capitalized.
  • Quantum advantage remains unproven in the NISQ era; candidates should evaluate the role with eyes open about commercial timelines.
  • Cultural fit favors candid, evidence-driven engineers and scientists who can operate in ambiguity and tolerate small-cap public-company volatility.

About Rigetti Computing

Rigetti Computing (NASDAQ: RGTI) is a full-stack quantum computing company headquartered in Berkeley, California, with an in-house superconducting qubit fabrication facility (Fab-1) in Fremont, California, and an additional engineering site in Oxford, United Kingdom. The company was founded in 2013 by Chad Rigetti, a physicist who previously worked on superconducting qubits at IBM Research. Rigetti went public in March 2022 through a SPAC merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, an event that briefly inflated valuation expectations and was followed by sustained share-price compression that has at times pushed the stock into penny-stock territory. Founder Chad Rigetti departed in late 2022, and Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, formerly CEO of CIRCOR International, has served as president and CEO since December 2022. After organizational restructurings and layoffs in 2023, Rigetti now operates with roughly 130 employees, a relatively small headcount for a full-stack hardware-plus-software quantum company. Technically, Rigetti builds superconducting transmon qubit processors and is one of the few quantum companies that owns its fabrication line. Its strategy centers on a modular, multi-chip architecture branded Ankaa, with Ankaa-3 being the publicly disclosed 84-qubit system as of 2024-2025, targeting two-qubit gate fidelities above 99.5%. The hardware is exposed through Quantum Cloud Services (QCS), Rigetti's cloud platform, and is also offered as on-premises systems for select government and enterprise customers. Rigetti processors are additionally available through Amazon Braket and, for some workloads, Microsoft Azure Quantum. Commercially, the customer base is heavy on US federal and federally-funded research: the Department of Energy quantum computing user programs, NIST, the Department of Defense, IARPA, DARPA, and the US Air Force, supplemented by university researchers and a small set of commercial pilot customers in financial services and pharmaceuticals. Rigetti also collaborates internationally, including work tied to UK quantum programs at Oxford and partnerships in Asia. The company sits inside a hotly contested field that includes IBM Quantum, Google Quantum AI (whose Willow chip in December 2024 reignited public interest in the sector), Microsoft Quantum, IonQ, Quantinuum, PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, QuEra, Pasqal, Oxford Quantum Circuits, and D-Wave. Practical, broadly useful quantum advantage remains unproven; this is the NISQ era. Candidates should join expecting frontier research conditions, federal-contract dependency, and the volatility that comes with being a small-cap quantum hardware company.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Browse open roles at jobs

    Browse open roles at jobs.lever.co/rigetti and filter by team (hardware, fab, software, theory, business) and location (Berkeley CA, Fremont CA, Oxford UK, remote where listed).

  2. 2
    Submit through Lever with a tailored resume, a one-page cover letter, and links

    Submit through Lever with a tailored resume, a one-page cover letter, and links to relevant artifacts (publications, GitHub, thesis, patents, fabrication portfolios).

  3. 3
    Expect an initial recruiter screen of about 30 minutes covering motivation for q

    Expect an initial recruiter screen of about 30 minutes covering motivation for quantum, location and visa status, compensation expectations, and security-clearance eligibility for federal-contract roles.

  4. 4
    Hiring-manager interview goes deep on your specific track: device physics, fab p

    Hiring-manager interview goes deep on your specific track: device physics, fab process, control electronics, compiler and software stack, theory, or commercial and program management.

  5. 5
    Technical loop typically includes 3 to 5 hour-long interviews with engineers, sc

    Technical loop typically includes 3 to 5 hour-long interviews with engineers, scientists, and a cross-functional partner; coding rounds use Python and may touch Quil, pyQuil, or general numerical computing.

  6. 6
    Senior research and hardware candidates should prepare a 45 to 60 minute technic

    Senior research and hardware candidates should prepare a 45 to 60 minute technical talk on prior published or proprietary work, followed by Q and A from staff.

  7. 7
    Behavioral and values interview probes ownership in ambiguous research environme

    Behavioral and values interview probes ownership in ambiguous research environments, willingness to operate in a small-cap public company with quarterly scrutiny, and comfort with federal-contract reporting requirements.

  8. 8
    References are typically requested late in the loop; for cleared roles, expect a

    References are typically requested late in the loop; for cleared roles, expect a separate background and clearance process that can extend the timeline by months.

  9. 9
    Offers include base, equity in RGTI shares (subject to public-market volatility)

    Offers include base, equity in RGTI shares (subject to public-market volatility), and standard US benefits; UK roles follow Oxford-area market norms.

  10. 10
    Decisions usually arrive within one to three weeks after the final loop; gaps ar

    Decisions usually arrive within one to three weeks after the final loop; gaps are common when funding cycles or federal contract milestones shift hiring plans.

Resume Tips for Rigetti Computing

recommended

Lead with quantum-relevant credentials: PhD or equivalent research output for ph

Lead with quantum-relevant credentials: PhD or equivalent research output for physics, materials, fab, controls, and theory roles is effectively the floor for technical staff positions.

recommended

Quantify hardware contributions: qubit counts, coherence times (T1, T2 echo), si

Quantify hardware contributions: qubit counts, coherence times (T1, T2 echo), single- and two-qubit gate fidelities, readout assignment fidelity, and yield improvements with specific percentages.

recommended

For fab and process roles, list tools by name (e-beam, ALD, RIE, lithography ste

For fab and process roles, list tools by name (e-beam, ALD, RIE, lithography steppers) and call out cleanroom class, Josephson junction process control, and any superconducting film expertise.

recommended

Software and compiler candidates should highlight Quil, pyQuil, OpenQASM, Qiskit

Software and compiler candidates should highlight Quil, pyQuil, OpenQASM, Qiskit, Cirq, pulse-level control, and experience with control electronics like Xilinx RFSoC, Quantum Machines, or in-house stacks.

recommended

Surface federal program experience explicitly: DOE, NIST, IARPA, DARPA, USAF pro

Surface federal program experience explicitly: DOE, NIST, IARPA, DARPA, USAF programs, plus any ITAR, EAR, or clearance status; this materially shortens onboarding for cleared roles.

recommended

Show publications, preprints, patents, and conference talks (APS March Meeting,

Show publications, preprints, patents, and conference talks (APS March Meeting, IEEE Quantum Week, Q2B); link to arXiv and Google Scholar profiles.

recommended

Use ATS-friendly formatting for Lever: single column, standard headings, no imag

Use ATS-friendly formatting for Lever: single column, standard headings, no images or text in graphics, PDF export, and consistent date formats.

recommended

Mirror role-specific keywords from the Lever posting (transmon, dilution refrige

Mirror role-specific keywords from the Lever posting (transmon, dilution refrigerator, microwave, calibration, error mitigation, QPU integration) without keyword stuffing.

recommended

Keep length to two pages for industry hires and up to three for senior research

Keep length to two pages for industry hires and up to three for senior research scientists with substantial publication records; include a short selected publications section.

recommended

Address gaps and pivots honestly; the quantum field is small and reference-check

Address gaps and pivots honestly; the quantum field is small and reference-checked thoroughly, so embellishment is high risk.

ATS System: Lever

Rigetti Computing uses Lever as its applicant tracking system, hosted at jobs.lever.co/rigetti. Lever supports clean PDF parsing, structured fields for education and experience, and EEO and self-identification questions for US roles.

  • Apply directly through jobs.lever.co/rigetti rather than third-party mirrors so your application enters the canonical pipeline.
  • Submit a PDF resume with selectable text; avoid scanned images, multi-column layouts, or graphics-as-text that confuse Lever's parser.
  • Use standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills, Publications) so Lever maps your data into the correct fields.
  • Fill in LinkedIn, GitHub, and personal site URLs in the structured profile fields to give recruiters fast triage signals.
  • Cover letters in Lever are usually optional but recommended for research and senior roles; keep to one page and be specific about the team you want to join.
  • Re-applications to similar roles are visible to recruiters; reference prior interviews honestly and highlight what has changed since.
  • Save the application confirmation email; Lever rarely sends rejection notices for every role, so absence of follow-up is not always a no.

Interview Culture

Interviews at Rigetti are technical, candid, and small-company.

You will likely meet a meaningful fraction of the team you would join, and conversations move quickly into specifics: the exact device you worked on, the calibration routine you wrote, the fabrication step you owned, the experiment you ran. Surface-level enthusiasm for quantum computing is not a differentiator; concrete, defensible technical depth is. Expect interviewers to probe failure modes in your past work, your debugging instincts when an experiment refuses to behave, and your ability to communicate clearly across hardware, software, and theory boundaries. Senior candidates are often asked how they would prioritize roadmap items under constrained budgets, which is a real condition at a small-cap quantum company. Behavioral questions emphasize comfort with ambiguity, ownership of long-cycle deliverables (fab runs, cooldowns, federal milestones), and the maturity to operate in a public company where roadmap statements have material consequences. The culture is more research lab than fast-moving consumer software shop. Pace is set by physical hardware cycles, not sprint cadences, and individual experiments can take weeks to set up, run, and analyze before producing a meaningful result. Candidates who thrive describe Rigetti as collegial, intellectually serious, and unusually willing to let individual contributors drive significant technical decisions, with the corresponding expectation that you will defend your reasoning rigorously and write it up clearly enough that program managers and federal sponsors can follow. Be prepared to discuss why Rigetti specifically, against IBM, Google, IonQ, Quantinuum, and well-funded private competitors, and to articulate where you think superconducting transmons still have room to run versus competing modalities. Interviewers also pay attention to how you handle disagreement: a willingness to update your view when presented with new data, while still pushing back on reasoning you find weak, is part of the cultural signal. Treat the loop as a two-way conversation; ask hard questions about runway, federal-program exposure, and how decisions get made between research priorities and customer commitments, because the candidates who join with eyes open tend to stay.

What Rigetti Computing Looks For

  • Strong physics, electrical engineering, materials, or computer science fundamentals, typically validated by a PhD for research and hardware roles or by exceptional industry experience.
  • First-hand work with superconducting qubits, dilution refrigerators, microwave control, cryogenic packaging, or comparable quantum hardware stacks.
  • Fabrication depth for fab roles: Josephson junction processing, thin-film deposition, lithography, etch, and yield-driven mindset in a real cleanroom.
  • Software craftsmanship in Python, with experience in pulse-level control, compilers, calibration automation, or distributed systems for QPU orchestration.
  • Theoretical fluency in quantum error correction, error mitigation, benchmarking (RB, XEB, GST), or near-term algorithm design where relevant to the role.
  • Demonstrated ability to ship into federal programs, meet milestones, and write the documentation those programs require without resentment.
  • Comfort with the realities of a small-cap public company: quarterly earnings, analyst scrutiny, share-price volatility, and disciplined messaging.
  • Ownership and intellectual honesty: a willingness to say 'we do not know yet' instead of overclaiming, which the field as a whole is still learning to do.
  • Collaboration across hardware, software, and theory; lone-wolf brilliance without integration is a poor fit at this size of company.
  • Mission alignment with advancing practical quantum computing despite the long, uncertain timeline to broad commercial advantage.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Rigetti Computing publicly traded?
Yes. Rigetti trades on NASDAQ under the ticker RGTI following a March 2022 SPAC merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II. The stock has experienced sharp swings and has at times traded as a penny stock, so equity compensation should be evaluated with that volatility in mind.
Who runs Rigetti today?
Dr. Subodh Kulkarni has served as president and CEO since December 2022, replacing founder Chad Rigetti, who departed that year. The leadership team blends quantum scientists with executives experienced in regulated and federal-contract businesses.
Where are Rigetti's offices?
Headquarters is in Berkeley, California. The company operates Fab-1, an in-house superconducting qubit fabrication facility, in Fremont, California, and has an engineering presence in Oxford, United Kingdom, supporting collaborations with UK quantum programs.
What ATS does Rigetti use, and where do I apply?
Rigetti uses Lever. Apply directly at jobs.lever.co/rigetti. Submit a PDF resume with selectable text and complete the structured fields so Lever can parse your background cleanly.
Do I need a PhD to work at Rigetti?
For most physics, materials, fab process, theory, and senior hardware roles, a PhD or equivalent research record is effectively the bar. Software, controls, mechanical, business, and operations roles can be filled by exceptional candidates without a PhD, but the technical bar remains high.
What kind of quantum hardware does Rigetti build?
Rigetti builds superconducting transmon qubit processors using a modular, multi-chip architecture branded Ankaa. Ankaa-3 is the publicly disclosed 84-qubit system as of 2024-2025, with a stated goal of pushing two-qubit gate fidelity above 99.5%.
How can I access Rigetti hardware as a developer or researcher?
Through Quantum Cloud Services (QCS) directly from Rigetti, through Amazon Braket, and for some workloads via Microsoft Azure Quantum. Federal users typically engage through DOE user programs and other government channels.
Were there layoffs at Rigetti, and how big is the company now?
Yes. Rigetti underwent restructurings and layoffs in 2023 and now operates with roughly 130 employees. That smaller footprint means broader individual scope and faster decision cycles, but also less buffer for any single project.
Does Rigetti hire internationally, and is visa sponsorship available?
Rigetti hires in the US (Berkeley, Fremont) and UK (Oxford). Visa sponsorship for US roles is handled case by case and is generally easier for senior PhD-level scientists and engineers than for entry-level candidates. Federal contract roles often require US persons status.
How dependent is Rigetti on federal contracts?
Materially dependent. Customers and partners include the DOE, NIST, DOD, IARPA, DARPA, and the US Air Force, alongside academic users and a smaller set of commercial pilots in financial services and pharmaceuticals. Candidates should expect federal program cycles to influence hiring, roadmap, and reporting cadence, and should be comfortable with the structured documentation, milestone reviews, and compliance posture that come with operating as a federal contractor.
Who are Rigetti's main competitors?
IBM Quantum, Google Quantum AI, Microsoft Quantum, IonQ, Quantinuum, PsiQuantum, Atom Computing, QuEra, Pasqal, Oxford Quantum Circuits, and D-Wave. Each pursues different qubit modalities (superconducting, trapped ion, neutral atom, photonic, annealing), and several are far better capitalized than Rigetti.
Has quantum computing produced commercial advantage yet?
Not in any broadly useful sense. The field is in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era. Demonstrations of quantum supremacy on contrived sampling tasks exist, including Google's Willow result in December 2024 showing improved error correction at scale, but practical, repeatable commercial advantage on workloads enterprises actually care about remains unproven across all hardware modalities. Candidates should evaluate Rigetti as a long-horizon bet on superconducting transmons reaching fault tolerance, not as a near-term revenue scale-up.
What languages help, beyond English?
English is the primary working language. Japanese can be useful given partnerships and the broader Japanese quantum ecosystem (NEC, Fujitsu, RIKEN), and Korean can help with collaborations involving Korean industrial partners. Neither is required for most roles.
What does interviewing at Rigetti feel like?
Technical, candid, and concrete. Expect to discuss specific devices, experiments, and code you have shipped, plus a senior-track talk for research roles. Behavioral conversations probe comfort with ambiguity, federal program rhythms, and small-cap public-company realities. Loops are typically efficient because the company is small enough that decisions do not need to traverse multiple committees, but the bar is high and feedback is direct rather than padded.
How should I think about RGTI equity in a Rigetti offer?
Treat it as a volatile small-cap public-company grant rather than a private-startup option. RGTI has traded at a wide range, including extended periods in penny-stock territory, and is sensitive to broad quantum sector news cycles, federal funding announcements, and quarterly earnings. Model multiple outcomes (significant downside, flat, and meaningful upside tied to roadmap milestones), understand the vesting schedule and tax treatment in your jurisdiction, and weigh equity alongside cash and benefits. Do not assume any specific share-price trajectory, and be cautious about concentrating your personal balance sheet in a single small-cap quantum equity.

Open Positions

Rigetti Computing currently has 13 open positions.

Check Your Resume Before Applying → View 13 open positions at Rigetti Computing

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Sources

  1. Rigetti Computing Careers (Lever) —
  2. Rigetti Computing Investor Relations —
  3. Rigetti Computing Official Website —
  4. Rigetti Computing Press Releases —
  5. Rigetti Computing on NASDAQ (RGTI) —
  6. Amazon Braket Supported Devices —
  7. Microsoft Azure Quantum Providers —
  8. DOE Quantum Computing User Program (OLCF) —
  9. Google Quantum AI Willow Announcement (December 2024) —
  10. IonQ Investor Relations (NYSE: IONQ) —
  11. Quantinuum Company Overview —
  12. Rigetti Blog (Ankaa-3 and Technical Updates) —
  13. SEC EDGAR Filings for Rigetti Computing —
  14. Lever Candidate Help Center —