[Hiring] Associate General Counsel, Product @IonQ

Role Description

IonQ's Legal team supports the company's global legal affairs, including intellectual property, corporate and securities matters, commercial contracting, regulatory compliance, and enterprise risk management. As IonQ scales its quantum computing, networking, sensing, and fabrication businesses, we're building a dedicated product legal function to partner directly with product, research, engineering, and go-to-market teams from the earliest stages of development, and this role is foundational to that effort.

As Associate General Counsel, Product, you'll report to the Head of Product Legal and serve as a trusted legal partner to the teams building IonQ's products, in a role defined not by practice area but by impact: if a matter shapes how IonQ's products are designed, built, or brought to market, the product legal team helps get it done. The successful candidate will bring deep regulatory compliance expertise for technology products alongside the drive to take complex, technology-driven transactions across the finish line.

Responsibilities:

• Counsel IonQ's product and research teams, providing practical, business-calibrated legal guidance across the full product lifecycle — with regulatory compliance and strategic transactions as signature areas of expertise.
• Lead regulatory compliance efforts for the manufacture, distribution, and sale of IonQ's products, both in the United States and abroad.
• Draft, negotiate, and execute complex technology-driven transactions that directly advance IonQ's product strategy, including strategic partnerships, licensing, joint development, and supply and manufacturing arrangements.
• Shape the playbooks, processes, and infrastructure of a new product legal function designed to scale with the business.
• Collaborate closely with product, research, engineering, finance, privacy, compliance, trade, and other cross-functional stakeholders, as well as outside counsel.
• Translate in both directions — distill complex legal concepts into clear, actionable guidance for non-lawyers, and render product, engineering, and business strategy in terms that sharpen product legal's advice and priorities.

Qualifications

• A J.D. from an accredited law school and active membership in good standing in at least one U.S. state bar (or eligibility for in-house/registered counsel status in your state of employment).
• 8+ years of relevant experience at a leading law firm and/or in-house legal department.
• Substantial experience advising on regulatory compliance for the manufacturing, distribution, and sale of technology products, both in the US and abroad.
• A proven track record of drafting, negotiating, and executing complex technology transactions with direct impact on business or product strategy.
• Demonstrated versatility — the range to move between regulatory and transactional matters, and the mindset to build your skills on matters outside your core practice areas.
• An appetite for genuinely novel legal questions — the judgment to advise confidently amid ambiguity, and the drive to work where technology is unprecedented and legal frameworks are still being written.
• A desire to become a force-multiplier for your team, uncovering new opportunities for speed and efficiency — including leveraging existing AI tools and helping to build superior ones.

Requirements

• In-house legal experience with a mature US technology company.
• Experience specific to hardware products or hardware-focused businesses.
• Experience supporting post-acquisition integration of products, technologies, or businesses.
• Proficiency with multiple languages.

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision plans.
• Matching 401(k).
• Unlimited PTO and paid holidays.
• Parental/adoption leave.
• Legal insurance.
• Home technology stipend.

Wage Transparency

$160,000 — $240,000 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.