Senior Director, Head of Data

About IonQ: 

IonQ, Inc. [NYSE: IONQ] is the world’s leading quantum platform and merchant supplier - delivering integrated quantum solutions across computing, networking, sensing, and security. IonQ’s newest generation of quantum computers, the IonQ Tempo, is the latest in a line of cutting-edge systems that have been helping customers and partners including Amazon Web Services, and AstraZeneca achieve 20x performance results and accelerate innovation in drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, logistics, cybersecurity, and defense. In 2025, the company achieved 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity, setting a world record in quantum computing performance.

Headquartered in College Park, Maryland, IonQ has operations in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Washington, Italy, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Our quantum computing services are available through all major cloud providers, while we also meet the needs of networking and sensing customers across land, sea, air, and space. IonQ is making quantum platforms more accessible and impactful than ever before.  

Location: This position can work onsite or hybrid from one of our offices in the US or fully remote.
Travel: Up to 5%, domestic. 
Job ID: 1670

The Role

IonQ is scaling rapidly across geographies, functions, and acquisitions. As a result, data is increasingly fragmented across systems, teams, and entities. We are hiring a Chief Data Officer to establish the IT-enabled data foundation, architecture, integration patterns, cataloging, and governance workflows needed to make data cohesive, trusted, secure, and usable across existing functional data domains. This role operates horizontally across the organization, partnering with Finance, GTM, HR, IT, Architecture, Security, and Product teams to ensure data is consistent, secure, and usable—without displacing functional ownership. Functions remain accountable for the business meaning, quality, rules, and use of their data; this role provides the enterprise data architecture, methodology, tooling, and integration support to make that data usable across IonQ.

Responsibilities

Enterprise Data Alignment, Source-of-Truth Mapping & Product Integration

Design and drive a common enterprise data framework that connects product, business-system, and functional data domains while preserving functional ownership of domain data 

Establish shared data models, taxonomies, and definition-management processes across core domains (Finance, GTM, People, Operations, R&D), with functional owners accountable for domain-specific business definitions

Maintain an enterprise registry of authoritative data sources, key data owners, major data flows, dependencies, and downstream reporting / analytics uses

Partner with product and engineering leaders to ensure data structures support productization and scalability

Data Governance Enablement, Policy Workflow & Quality

Define and implement data governance operating models that clarify ownership, stewardship, decision rights, escalation paths, and accountability across functions, IT, Security, and Legal / Compliance

Establish standards for data quality controls, lineage, auditability, and cross-system data integrity, while functional owners remain accountable for the accuracy and business quality of their source data

Partner with functional data owners, Legal / Compliance, Security, IT, and Architecture to develop and operationalize data policies, governance workflows, and control requirements

Ensure data is trusted, explainable, and decision-ready across the organization

Data Access, Security & Compliance

Design and implement data access models, including:

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC)

Establish access-request, approval, provisioning, and audit workflows, with functional data owners retaining approval authority for access to their domain data

Ensure alignment with enterprise identity and access management (IAM) systems

Partner closely with Security (CISO) Legal / Compliance, and functional data owners to translate requirements into practical data-access, tagging, handling, and control workflows for:

ITAR, export controls, CUI, PII, financial data, and other regulatory requirements

Enable secure, appropriate, and auditable data availability across stakeholders, consistent with agreed business, legal, and security rules

Data Strategy & Infrastructure Alignment

Develop and maintain the enterprise data-platform roadmap, aligned to existing and future environments, including:

Snowflake environments across business units

Potential data lake, lakehouse, warehouse, semantic-layer, or hybrid architectures as needed

Assess when to connect, consolidate, or defer data-platform buildout based on function-led system consolidation timelines, reporting needs, data quality, and integration complexity

Partner with IT and Architecture to ensure data flows, pipelines, and integrations are scalable and consistent

Document how data moves across systems, where it is sourced, which system is authoritative, what transformations occur, and where downstream reports or automated workflows depend on it

Data Integration & M&A

Lead the IT/data workstream for acquisitions and new entities, focused on data-source mapping, integration patterns, lineage, access, quality controls, and reporting readiness

Develop scalable approaches to onboard, normalize, and harmonize new data environments in partnership with functional system owners and integration teams

Create mechanisms to reconcile and document differences in data definitions and structures across entities, with functional owners approving domain-specific definitions

Intellectual Property & Critical Data Assets

Establish the methodology, tooling, and workflows to identify, classify, tag, and manage critical data and IP across the enterprise, in partnership with Legal, Security, technical stakeholders, and functional data owners

Partner with Security, Legal, and technical stakeholders to ensure:

Appropriate controls and protections are in place defined, implemented, and monitored through the right combination of IT/Data, Security, Legal / Compliance, and functional-owner responsibilities

Data remains usable while protected

Enable project- or program-level data handling rules where appropriate, so sensitive technical, product, or program data can be protected without requiring every end user to make legal or export-control determinations

Support development of a long-term strategy for safeguarding high-value data assets

What You Won’t Own (by design)

To maintain clarity and avoid duplication:

Analytics, KPIs, and business reporting ownership (Finance / Business Analytics); this role owns the governed data foundation, lineage, and source-of-truth mapping that enable trusted reporting

AI strategy and business use cases (AI leadership/ business owners); this role supports the data access, governance, integration, and deployment-control pathways for AI/ML capabilities that use enterprise data

Enterprise applications and core infrastructure ownership (CIO / IT application and infrastructure owners); this role owns or co-owns data-platform strategy, data integration patterns, metadata, lineage, and cataloging within the IT operating model

Non-data enterprise architecture and business-system design (Architecture/ system owners); this role owns enterprise data architecture, data-flow standards, and integration-design guidance

Cybersecurity strategy, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and security-control validation (CISO); this role partners with Security to implement data-aware controls, tagging, access workflows, and evidence trails

Domain-level data ownership, including business meaning, source-system data quality, business rules, and functional usage decisions (remains within functions)

Operating Model

Acts as a horizontal leader and integrator, not a vertical owner

Serves as a consultative data architecture and integrity reviewer on function-led initiatives, not the default approval gate or replacement for the functional system owner

Drives alignment through influence, standards, and governance—not control

Holds decision rights over IT-owned data architecture, data-platform roadmap, integration standards, cataloging, metadata, lineage, and data-governance workflows; functional owners retain decision rights over domain definitions and business rules

Works closely with:

Finance / Analytics (data inputs to reporting)

GTM (CRM and pipeline data consistency)

HR (people data via HRIS transformation)

IT / Architecture (systems and data flows)

Security (compliance and protection)

Product / Engineering (product-aligned data structures)

The approximate base salary range for this position is $192,979 - $252,659. The total compensation package includes base, bonus, equity, and a range of benefit options found on our career site.

If this role has a commission structure, the compensation range below just reflects the base compensation range.

Wage Transparency:

$192,979—$276,722 USD

Compensation will vary based on individual factors such as education, qualifications, and experience of the final candidate(s), specific office location, and calibration against relevant market data and internal team equity. Posted base salary figures are subject to change as new market data becomes available. Our benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans, matching 401(k), unlimited PTO and paid holidays, parental/adoption leave, legal insurance, and a home technology stipend. Details of participation in these benefit plans will be provided when a candidate receives an offer of employment. 

At IonQ, we believe in fair treatment, access, opportunity, and advancement for all while striving to identify and eliminate barriers. We empower employees to thrive by fostering a culture of autonomy, productivity, and respect. We are dedicated to creating an environment where individuals can feel welcomed, respected, supported, and valued.

We are committed to equity and justice. We welcome different voices and viewpoints and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, ancestry, physical and/or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer.

US Technical Jobs. The position you are applying for will require access to technology that is subject to U.S. export control and government contract restrictions.  Employment with IonQ is contingent on either verifying “U.S. Person” (e.g., U.S. citizen, U.S. national, U.S. permanent resident, or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum) status for export controls and government contracts work, obtaining any necessary license, and/or confirming the availability of a license exception under U.S. export controls.  Please note that in the absence of confirming you are a U.S. Person for export control and government contracts work purposes, IonQ may choose not to apply for a license or decline to use a license exception (if available) for you to access export-controlled technology that may require authorization, and similarly, you may not qualify for government contracts work that requires U.S. Persons, and IonQ may decline to proceed with your application on those bases alone.  Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.  

US Non-Technical Jobs. Due to applicable export control laws and regulations, candidates must be a U.S. citizen or national, U.S. permanent resident (i.e., current Green Card holder), or lawfully admitted into the U.S. as a refugee or granted asylum. Accordingly, we will have some additional questions regarding your immigration status that will be used for export control and compliance purposes, and the answers will be reviewed by compliance personnel to ensure compliance with federal law.

If you are interested in being a part of our team and mission, we encourage you to apply!