Your mission
The future of AI computing is light, not electrons.
As Head of IT, you will ensure Q.ANT runs its IT landscape as a fully governed, highly secure, and scalable system rather than a scattered collection of tools. You will hold overall architecture authority across the company, reconciling rapid headcount growth, seamless infrastructure support for specialized laboratory and manufacturing environments, and the strict protection of our core intellectual property. By embedding robust IT governance, structural architecture standards, IT service management (ITSM), and information security frameworks into our infrastructure, you will transform IT into a key accelerator for scale - ensuring every new team member, lab workstation, and production line is seamlessly onboarded into a resilient, highly protected environment.
Your Impact & Responsibilities
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Establish Architecture Authority (TOGAF): Define and lead the long-term enterprise architecture strategy, structuring how data, applications, and infrastructure interact while connecting all systems to a single identity anchor to streamline lifecycle management and security enforcement.
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Drive IT Governance & Investment (COBIT / ISO 38500): Align IT strategies directly with business goals—ensuring the company does the right things with IT by anchoring investment decisions on evidence-based data, optimized IT budgets, and strategic board recommendations.
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Build Operational Excellence & Provider Governance (ITIL): Define, deliver, and operate robust IT services. Retain complete internal ownership of the configuration and application inventory while holding external service providers accountable to rigorous contractual performance metrics, service levels, and monthly reviews.
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Protect Intellectual Property & Ensure Compliance (ISO/IEC 27001 & NIS2): Build and maintain an advanced security foundation—enforcing data classification, loss prevention, and managed detection and response to safeguard patents, source code, and R&D data against threats, fully integrated with ISO 9001 and NIS2 requirements.
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Bridge R&D, Lab & Operations: Serve as the central technical liaison across Development, Manufacturing, Finance, and QM, ensuring general IT infrastructure and identity frameworks effectively enable specialized laboratory systems and engineering software managed by R&D.
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Lead Transformation & Team: Directly manage and mentor the internal IT team while presenting strategic architecture and investment proposals directly to the management board.
Your profile
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Education: Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, IT Engineering, or equivalent practical depth.
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Experience: 7+ years in IT infrastructure, IT security, or IT leadership with direct accountability for enterprise architecture decisions and building security capability from the ground up.
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Framework Expertise: Strong command of industry-standard IT frameworks: COBIT / ISO 38500 (IT Governance – ensuring IT aligns with business goals and delivers value) TOGAF (Architecture Governance – structuring data, applications, and infrastructure) ITIL (IT Service Management – delivering and operating high-quality IT services) ISO / IEC 27001 (Information Security Management – protecting systems, data, and processes).
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Proven Track Record: Experience managing external service providers, running cloud identity platforms (SAML/SCIM federation) in production, and supporting fast-growing tech or scale-up environments (exposure to lab, manufacturing, or engineering IT is a major plus).
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Technical Depth: Deep understanding of hybrid cloud environments, endpoint management, Jira/Confluence service management, data classification, and IT governance.
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Mindset & Leadership: Strong ownership, high solution orientation, and exceptional stakeholder management skills—able to lead through influence, articulate technical trade-offs to non-specialists, and drive company-wide adoption.
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Language Proficiency: Fluent in both German (C1) and English (C1) due to internal governance documentation, developer collaboration, and external stakeholder interfaces (both are required).
Why us?
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Work on the leading edge: Photonic AI acceleration technologies that will define the next decade of computing - already validated in production HPC environments.
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Make impact at scale: Help solve one of computing's biggest challenges—making growing demand in compute and sustainability go hand in hand.
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Own your work from day one: Broad autonomy and decision authority with direct impact on product success, production efficiency, and overall NPU quality.
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Fast-track your growth: Work on challenges with few industry precedents—every problem you solve becomes new institutional knowledge and potentially industry-defining IP.
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World-class team: Collaborate alongside a passionate, international, cross-functional team of experts in photonics, processor design, and AI systems.
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Direct access to leadership: Work closely with the company's leaders, including VP SW and founders, within a transparent and fast-moving structure.
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Collaborative culture: Innovative work environment that values technical excellence, open communication, and pragmatic problem-solving.
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Be part of history: Join at the inflection point where photonic computing transitions from research to mainstream—your contributions will shape this transformation.
About us
Who we are and what we do
Q.ANT is a deep-tech scale-up developing photonic processing solutions that compute natively with light and deliver a scalable alternative to transistor-based systems. The analog co-processors are optimised for complex computations and enable energy-efficient performance for next-generation AI and HPC applications. In collaboration with the Institute for Microelectronics Stuttgart IMS CHIPS, Q.ANT operates its own pilot line for photonic chips, based on the material system Thin-Film Lithium Niobate TFLN. Q.ANT was founded by Michael Förtsch in 2018 and is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany.