Company Information

Company Name: Yaqumo Inc.

Website: https://yaqumo.com/

Founded: April 2025

Locations

Head Office Yusen Building 1F
2-3-2 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo Office Akasaka H1O
3-17-3 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan

Kyoto University Research Site Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University
Kitashirakawa Oiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, Japan

Institute for Molecular Science Research Site 38 Nishigonaka, Myodaiji-cho, Okazaki, Aichi, Japan

Company Overview

Yaqumo is a quantum computing startup founded on research originating from the Takahashi Laboratory at Kyoto University and the Omori Laboratory at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS).

Our core technology is based on neutral-atom quantum computing, a promising architecture known for its scalability to large numbers of qubits. While neutral-atom systems offer significant advantages in scalability, challenges remain in areas such as fault tolerance and computational performance. Yaqumo combines the expertise of both research groups to address these challenges.

In 2025, the company secured approximately JPY 700 million in funding and was selected for a major NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization) program. We are currently developing ytterbium-based quantum gates, control systems, and quantum error correction technologies, with the goal of delivering a prototype fault-tolerant quantum computer by FY2027.

Our long-term vision is to bring neutral-atom quantum computing into practical use and tackle societal challenges that are beyond the capabilities of conventional computing.

Recent News

• Global Quantum VC Quantonation Selects Yaqumo as Its First Japanese Investment
  https://yaqumo.com/en/news/287/
• Yaqumo, NKT Photonics, and Hamamatsu Photonics Sign MOU on Development and Industrialization of Advanced Photonic Systems for Quantum Computing
  https://yaqumo.com/en/news/337/
• Alumni Ventures Makes First-Ever Japan Investment in Yaqumo to Back the Future of Neutral-Atom Quantum Computing
  https://yaqumo.com/en/news/351/

Mission

As we move from "experiment support" to building an actual machine, the control stack has to become reliable enough to run as a product. You will own that reliability — the maintenance, monitoring, deployment, and upgrade path for our quantum control system, across both development and production environments — so that senior engineers stay on the roadmap instead of firefighting, and the machine can move toward continuous, day-long operation.
This is a 0→1 operations role. There is no existing ops foundation; you build it.
Expect incomplete requirements and shifting constraints. You'll make progress with sound engineering judgment and harden things as the system stabilizes — not wait for a perfect spec.

What you'll do

• Build CI/CD, build, and release automation for the control software stack
• Stand up monitoring, observability, and alerting across the control system and the lab's environmental sensor infrastructure (temperature, vibration, humidity nodes)
• Build hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) test automation so control-stack changes are validated against the real devices before they ship
• Drive system reliability : incident response, root-causing, and removing recurring maintenance toil from the engineering teams
• Own deployment, configuration management, and the upgrade/rollback path
• Automate regression and validation so changes to the control stack ship safely
• Scope boundary: partner with the network engineer on lab/infra networking — you own software reliability and deployment, they own the network fabric
• Partner with the Architecture group on the path to product-level reliability and the next-generation machine's target of continuous operation

Must-have

• 5+ years in SRE, DevOps, or systems engineering, with demonstrated ownership of production reliability
• CI/CD and build/release automation
• Monitoring / observability tooling (metrics, logs, alerting)
• Python (or equivalent) for automation and tooling
• Strong Linux fundamentals
• Business-level English for a global team
• Self-directed learner comfortable ramping into an unfamiliar (quantum / physics) domain

Nice-to-have

• Infrastructure-as-code (Ansible, Terraform)
• Containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Time-series monitoring stacks (Prometheus / Grafana) and dashboarding
• Experience operating scientific instruments, lab systems, or hardware-in-the-loop setup
• Networking fundamentals
• Experience with high-reliability or 24×7 systems
• Interest in quantum computing / physics

Why this role

• Define how a quantum computer is operated and kept alive — from zero
• Directly unblock the roadmap by taking operational load off senior engineers
• Own a hard, concrete target: move the machine toward continuous operation
• Founding-era scope with a clear path into the new quantum computer architecture group

Hiring Process

CV Review → First Interview → Second Interview → Reference Check → Final Interview

• Depending on the position, candidates may be asked to complete a technical assignment after the first interview.
• We place a strong emphasis on mutual understanding throughout the hiring process. Depending on the role and evaluation process, additional interviews, informal meetings with team members, or offer discussions may be arranged.

Employment Details

Employment Type: Full-time

Compensation: JPY 8M–15M, depending on experience and qualifications

Work Schedule: Discretionary Labor System for Professional Work (R&D)

Probation Period: 2 months (no changes to employment conditions during probation)

Work Location: 1F Room 104, International Science Innovation Building East Wing, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi 36, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan

Working Hours: Discretionary Labor System (deemed working hours: 8 hours/day). Standard office hours: 9:00–18:00

Days Off: Complete two-day weekend (Saturday and Sunday), national holidays, summer holidays, year-end/New Year holidays

Paid Leave: 10 days granted after 6 months of employment

Benefits: Annual health check-up

Insurance: Health Insurance, Employees' Pension Insurance, Employment Insurance

Smoking Policy: Non-smoking indoors