Craig Gidney
Research Scientist at Google
Santa Barbara, California, United States
Summary
🤩
RockstarCraig Gidney is a research scientist on Google's quantum computing team with 17 years of software engineering experience, blending production-grade engineering discipline with deep algorithmic work. Based in Santa Barbara, he has strong open-source credentials in prominent quantum projects like Cirq and Stim, where he refactored core data structures, improved performance, and strengthened test and serialization infrastructure. He pairs low-level optimization—memory-efficient Pauli-string representations and simulator measurement techniques—with practical front-end and mobile experience, having improved UI and audio/registration robustness in Signal iOS. His background shows a rare full-stack fluency across backend systems, simulators, and browser-based quantum tools like Quirk. Notably, he moves comfortably between shipping reliable tests and digging into quantum algorithm internals, making him effective at turning research ideas into production-ready code.
17 years of coding experience
Stackoverflow
17,991reputation
2.0mreached
276answers
140questions
time-complexity
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Github Skills (41)
algorithm10
unit-testing10
objective-c10
algorithms10
javascript10
c-language10
ios10
mobile-development10
python10
ui-design10
data-structure10
uid10
big-o10
front-end-development10
performance-optimization10
Programming languages (19)
Github contributions (5)
quantumlib/Cirq
Jan 2018 - Jun 2021
Python framework for creating, editing, and running Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) circuits.
Role in this project:
Back-end & Test Engineer
Back-end & Test EngineerContributions:5 releases, 96 reviews, 562 commits in 3 years 5 months
Contributions summary:Craig focused on refactoring and testing within the Cirq codebase. The user's contributions included significant changes related to the internals of gates and operations. They were also involved in fixing bugs associated with tests and various serialization issues. They implemented tests for performance of the code.
pythonnisqquantum-algorithmsquantum-computingcirq
Strilanc/Quirk
Mar 2014 - Oct 2020
A drag-and-drop quantum circuit simulator that runs in your browser. A toy for exploring and understanding small quantum circuits.
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:17 releases, 7 reviews, 1311 commits in 6 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Craig primarily contributed to the front-end aspects of the Quirk quantum circuit simulator. Their work focused on UI elements like the visual representation of control wires and the user interface design. They also addressed bugs related to display order and were involved in implementing aspects of the code's UI for improved overall user experience. The user was also involved with fixing issues with save-offline-copy and with drawing circuits on a screen
drag-and-dropquantum-computingquantum-circuitsimulation
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