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Job description-Next Frontier Quantum Associate

At EY, we're all in to shape your future with confidence.

We'll help you succeed in a globally connected powerhouse of diverse teams and take your career wherever you want it to go.

Join EY and help to build a better working world.

Role Title-Next Frontier Quantum Associate

About the Next Frontier:

Applied Innovation's Next Frontier focuses on emerging technologies, including Physical AI, Quantum Computing, and Next-Generation AI amongst others. This initiative translates advanced capabilities into measurable outcomes, helping clients and EY teams improve decision-making, strengthen resilience, and unlock new opportunities through technology-driven solutions.

About the Delivery Team:

EY advances innovation in Quantum by enabling regional quantum labs and supporting business-driven initiatives. The focus is on practical quantum technologies and frameworks that deliver measurable, enterprise-value level benefits.

Next Frontier's Quantum team is led by Kartheek Solipuram, EY Global Innovation Quantum Leader, under the leadership of Dr. Rodrigo Madanes, EY Global Innovation Next Frontier Leader.

Position Summary:

The Quantum Associate will work on Quantum Technology initiatives. This role requires background, knowledge, and practical experience with the usability and impact of quantum technologies. There will be 60-70% focus on quantum safety and 30% focus on quantum computing.

Essential Responsibilities of the Job:

Build & Commercialize: Lead and support development, demos, and presentations of solutions in both quantum cybersecurity and quantum computing domains.
Quantum Safety: Contribute to the organization's PQC (post quantum cryptography) readiness, including risk assessments, migration planning, and crypto agility improvements.
Quantum Compute: Develop and evaluate quantum algorithms and workflows for optimization, machine learning, and simulation use cases.
Software Development & Implementation: Build software kits and tools, design and implement architecture, benchmark performance, and employ best practices in software engineering.
Thought Leadership: Produce clear leadership and sector presentations, assessment reports, standards, and executive level documents.
Teaming: Collaborate with cross functional teams including security engineering, ML/AI groups, platform teams, and product stakeholders.

Quantum Specialist Responsibilities:

Quantum Cyber:
- Assess quantum related risks (e.g., harvest now decrypt later exposure) and contribute to mitigation roadmaps.
- Prototype and benchmark PQC algorithms (e.g., ML KEM/Kyber, ML DSA/Dilithium) within services and applications.
- Maintain an index of how the current and upcoming proposed algorithms fare fully PQ safe and hybrid versions of the same against operational impacts to recommend appropriate migration roadmaps
- Support development of crypto-inventory tools to detect legacy cryptography dependencies.
- Implement and test hybrid key exchange schemes and measure performance impacts (latency, throughput, resource usage).
- Assist with design and validation of crypto-agility patterns, certificate lifecycle updates, and key management transitions.
- Contribute to internal PQC migration guides, standards, and runbooks.
Quantum Compute & Algorithms:
- Develop accelerators using NISQ appropriate quantum algorithms (VQE, QAOA, QML) and industry SDKs for use cases.
- Run extensive testing and validation exercises to estimate viability, usage and support road mapping of quantum utility for use cases.
- Build end to end prototypes for domain specific use cases such as optimization, simulations, modeling of Quantum as well as next frontier of Quantum & AI/ML tech
- Perform resource estimation (qubit count, gate depth, circuit complexity) and evaluate classical-quantum tradeoffs.
- Maintain reproducible experimentation pipelines using Python, Jupyter, containerization, and CI workflows.

Knowledge and Skills Requirements:

Foundational understanding of quantum computing principles, qubits, gates, NISQ constraints, and error mitigation.
Working knowledge of post quantum cryptography, including KEMs, signature schemes, and cryptographic standards.
Familiarity with PKI, TLS 1.3, certificate management, and key exchange mechanisms.
Proficiency with one or more quantum SDKs: Qiskit, Cirq, PennyLane, AWS Braket, Azure Quantum/QDK.
Strong Python programming capabilities, including numerical libraries (NumPy, SciPy, pandas).
Understanding of classical optimization, linear algebra, and probabilistic reasoning.
Experience with version control (Git), containers (Docker), and CI/CD workflows. Languages: Python, C++, Rust, or equivalent
Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to distill complex concepts for different audiences.
Analytical thinking and a structured, hypothesis-driven approach to problem solving.

Education & Experience:

Bachelors or Masters Degree in Physics, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, EE, Applied Math, or related field or equivalent hands-on experience.
2-3+ years of Hands-on experience in at least one of the following areas:
- Post quantum cryptographic implementations
- Applied cryptography or security engineering
- Quantum algorithm development
Experience in quantum technologies, cryptography, or related computational fields is a plus.
Publications, preprints, hackathon projects, or open-source contributions in quantum or applied security are highly desirable but not required.
Familiarity with Cybersecurity fundamentals (public-key crypto, KEMs/signatures, TLS, PKI concepts).
Understanding of post-quantum cryptography basics and current standardization landscape.
Experience with at least one quantum SDK (e.g., Qiskit, PennyLane, or Azure Quantum QDK).
Ability to design small experiments, analyze results, and write clear technical documentation.
Should be open to working US-East Coast working hours

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