Technical Co-Founder — Quantum + Applied Engineering

Company DescriptionZavia is a real-time enterprise decision platform. Most applied quantum computing work today sits in a few already-claimed lanes — drug discovery, materials science, financial risk, cryptography. Nobody has a credible quantum-advantage story in how large enterprises actually make decisions, millions of them, in real time, under real ambiguity. That's an open category, and Zavia is built to define it — quantum computing sits at the center of our long-term differentiation as a genuine, actively-worked research question, not a marketing label.Role DescriptionThis is a full-time, founding Technical Co-Founder role, based in Chicago, IL. It's a founding seat. You'd own the applied research agenda outright and set technical direction from day one, with the freedom (and responsibility) that comes with defining a category instead of executing inside one someone else already claimed. Zavia is pre-seed today, so the work is genuinely hands-on: research, prototyping, and building the platform the research plugs into, working closely with the business and go-to-market side as things progress. There's already an early technical result validated on real quantum hardware and real enterprise relationships in motion — this isn't a napkin idea, and the person who takes this seat helps decide what it becomes next. Ownership here is real and founder-level, not a token slot or an advisor grant.QualificationsGraduate-level quantum computing or quantum information science background — PhD candidate or exceptional postgraduate.Real, hands-on gate-model experience: Qiskit, variational quantum circuits. Quantum annealing background is a different hardware paradigm and isn't a fit here.Genuine interest in applying quantum probability or quantum-cognition formalism to represent states of real ambivalence — not just statistical uncertainty. This sits close to the center of the actual research question here.Experience running or validating circuits on real quantum hardware (e.g., IBM Quantum via Qiskit Runtime) is a strong plus.Actual shipped code somewhere — not only research notebooks.Comfortable with the honest state of the field: a multi-year applied research bet, not a claim that quantum hardware is running inside a live product today.Comfortable with founding-stage equity and ownership rather than a fixed salary.Based in Chicago, or connected to the Chicago quantum ecosystem (UIUC's IQUIST, UChicago's Chicago Quantum Exchange), is a plus, not a requirement.