Next Frontier Quantum Associate Junior EY GDS

About the Next Frontier:

Applied Innovations 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 Frontiers 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 organizations PQC (postquantum cryptography) readiness including risk assessments migration planning and cryptoagility 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 executivelevel documents.
• Teaming: Collaborate with crossfunctional teams including security engineering ML/AI groups platform teams and product stakeholders.

Quantum Specialist Responsibilities:

• Quantum Cyber:
• Assess quantumrelated risks (e.g. harvestnowdecryptlater exposure) and contribute to mitigation roadmaps.
• Prototype and benchmark PQC algorithms (e.g. MLKEM/Kyber MLDSA/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 NISQappropriate 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 endtoend prototypes for domainspecific 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 classicalquantum 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 postquantum 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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