Engineering Operations Lead

QuEra is seeking an Engineering Operations Lead to support day-to-day execution across software, hardware, test infrastructure, and QPU programs, helping make that work more predictable, visible, and efficient. Reporting to the SVP of Engineering, this person will support the operating rhythm around engineering: planning meetings, cross-team dependency tracking, Jira and Confluence hygiene, release and integration coordination, operational metrics, and follow-up on decisions and action items. The role frees engineering leaders and senior technical staff to spend more time on architecture, technical decisions, team development, and delivery. This is a hands-on individual-contributor role and a strong opportunity to learn how a complex hardware/software engineering organization operates. You will work closely with engineering and functional leaders, who remain accountable for priorities, staffing and resource allocation, architecture, technical acceptance criteria, technical risk acceptance, and release or machine go/no-go decisions. Your job is to keep the supporting structure running smoothly so those teams can work together effectively. What you will do: Support engineering planning and execution Help run a consistent planning and review cadence across software, hardware, QPU programs, and test and engineering infrastructure, including scheduling, agendas, and follow-up. Work with leaders and technical owners to keep the engineering plan current, with named owners, milestones, dependencies, and acceptance criteria for each initiative. Maintain a clear, up-to-date view of active initiatives, planned work, key dependencies, risks, and delivery status. Coordinate and take notes for weekly execution reviews, roadmap reviews, release-readiness reviews, and milestone retrospectives. Flag priority or resource conflicts as you spot them and bring them to the appropriate leader. Track decisions and action items and follow up with owners until they are closed. Support Jira, Confluence, and GitHub hygiene Apply and help refine the standards for initiative, epic, issue, and release hygiene that engineering leaders set across engineering Jira projects. Check that active work has a clear owner, current status, priority, target date, dependency context, and definition of done, and follow up with owners when it does not. Keep Jira roadmaps, Confluence status pages, and engineering documentation up to date and consistent with GitHub delivery activity so reporting stays reliable. Prepare and help run regular backlog and work-in-progress reviews, flagging stale, duplicate, unowned, or poorly scoped work for leaders to address. Help maintain links between requirements, engineering decisions, implementation, validation, and release. Look for opportunities to automate recurring status collection and reporting, such as Jira dashboards, filters, and simple scripts. Cross-functional dependency and milestone management: Help track…