Categorization of Roles in the Quantum Industry

Abstract

Continued growth of the quantum information science and engineering (QISE) industry has resulted in stakeholders spanning education, industry, and government seeking to better understand the workforce needs. This report presents a framework for the categorization of roles in the QISE industry based on 42 interviews of QISE professionals across 23 companies, as well as a description of the method used in the creation of this framework. The data included information on over 80 positions, which we have grouped into 29 roles spanning four primary categories. For each primary category we provide an overview of what unites the roles within a category, a description of relevant subcategories, and definitions of the individual roles. These roles serve as the basis upon which we generate profiles of these roles, which include information about role critical tasks, necessary knowledge and skills, and educational requirements. Our next report will present such profiles for each of the roles presented herein.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Summary of major categories and their subcategories for roles in the QISE industry.
• Figure 2: Distribution of interviewed companies by type and size. We did 42 interviews with professionals at 23 distinct companies. We had a few interviewees from the same company and most companies self-reported participation in more than one type of activity. We adopted definitions consistent with prior literature fox2020preparingel2025industry for company types. Company size corresponds to the range of employees working in quantum-related technologies in these companies.
• Figure 3: The structure of the roles in the hardware category.
• Figure 4: The structure of roles in the software category.
• Figure 5: The structure of roles in the bridging category.