Curious about life at Qblox and the role of an Application Scientist? We interviewed Willemijn Uilhoorn, a Qblox application scientist specializing in color centers.
Discover how Willemijn's background in experimental physics led her to embrace the dynamic world of technical sales and the unique challenges and rewards it brings. In her own words, Willemijn describes her tasks and the vibrant culture at Qblox.
What is your educational background?
I studied Applied Physics at TU Delft in The Netherlands, where I soon discovered my passion for experimental quantum physics, specifically quantum computing. This led me to do my bachelor thesis project with NV centers and a master thesis project on hybrid cQED devices.
Since I just could not get enough, I continued the research of my master's thesis as a Ph.D. student, investigating magnetic field compatible Josephson-junction-based superconducting circuits.
I “hobbied” many hours in the cleanroom to integrate graphene stacks and semiconducting nanowires in superconducting circuits and spent ample time maintaining the measurement setup and coding experiments. Liking the experimental life so much, it was obvious to me that I would want to find such experimental aspects in my career after my PhD, which at the time I believed only would be possible in academics. Spoiler alert: I was wrong!
What do you do at Qblox?
My role title is application scientist, making me part of the sales department. In my experience as an experimental physicist in university research, I never considered transitioning to a commercial role. That changed when I found out that at Qblox the role of technical sales focuses on informing rather than just selling.
An application scientist is the connection between Qblox and the market. Since the current market is a highly scientific environment, a scientific background is essential. This connection is crucial for two reasons; we inform potential customers about our products and how our product can solve their pains in the lab, and secondly, through this interaction, we are in the position to truly understand the market requirements, which inform our product development.
So what does a typical day look like for you?
An application scientist's daily tasks are quite diverse, so I (thankfully) don’t have a typical day, but the typical activities include
* conducting sales calls (where we explain what our products can do and understand the use case),
* answering technical questions that come in via email,
* doing online demonstrations where we visualize the pulse sequences of interest on an oscilloscope,
* performing on-site demonstrations for the potential customer to tune up their qubits live,
* attending conferences, and
*providing technical marketing content.
These different activities make for a stimulating workday and also reflect the project-based nature of the work.
As part of the sales team, do you also interact with other departments?
Of course, for a company to work effectively, collaborations between departments are crucial. As an application scientist, there are three departments that we have a tight interconnection with; roadmap leaders, quantum application engineers, and the marketing department.
Firstly, our direct contact with the research field offers us a good insight into its development and evolving requirements. This is crucial information for the roadmap leader when conceptualizing future products. Not only does this inform our strategy, but it is a symbiotic relationship too: the sales team may receive a request from our roadmap leaders to investigate whether the field would be interested in certain products/features.
Secondly, the quantum application engineers (application-focused software designers) are the final department of the research and development chain. We depend on them for knowledge transfer on how to use the software such that we can show off all the capabilities of the product in demonstrations.
Lastly, the marketing department relies on our technical expertise for content creation and to provide unique selling points for setting up Qblox marketing strategies.
What do you like most about your role?
My favorite aspect of my job is the on-site visits, where we showcase the Cluster in action on real qubits. I thoroughly enjoy the chance to explore various labs, even get to work on their setups, and engage in discussions on numerous quantum experiments on various qubit modalities.
Debugging setups and grasping the varied experimental objectives align perfectly with my ambition to evolve as an experimental scientist. When I accepted this commercial role at Qblox, I did not anticipate the extent to which this job would shape me into a more skilled and versatile experimentalist.
Do the on-site visits you mentioned require you to travel regularly for your role?
Yes, I travel regularly, not only for demonstrations at potential clients but also to attend conferences. As a team, our level of attendance varies. We may attend as guests or as exhibitors and presenters at the scientific sessions.
Qblox’s products are qubit agnostic. What does that mean for your role?
We can support different qubit types with our control system. For me, that means that I get to interact with various qubit communities and get the opportunity to strengthen my knowledge of the different modalities. This was actually one of the main reasons why I decided to work at a company designing control electronics, rather than on the development of a quantum processor. In this way, I get to zoom out and gain knowledge on the broad spectrum of quantum computation.
In your own words, what is it like working at Qblox?
I absolutely love working at Qblox. I admire the people I get to work with, everyone is so knowledgeable in their own field and is very curious to learn about each other’s expertise. I would describe the general Qblox employee as ambitious and positively minded, but also caring and social. The company is five years old and was set up to be rather flat in structure, so even though there is a certain hierarchy in decision-making, everyone's opinion is appreciated. It makes the company feel like a group of friends, making it extremely fun to go to work.
Come and find us at a conference, and you can see for yourself!