Steven Heidel
Member Of Technical Staff at OpenAI
San Francisco, California, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolSteven Heidel is a software engineer and technical leader with 11 years of experience building scalable systems and teams at the intersection of cloud services and quantum computing. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at OpenAI, he previously led software for AWS’s quantum hardware research, growing the org from one to fifteen engineers and co-authoring OpenQASM 3. He combines deep systems and backend expertise—shipping production services at LinkedIn, Airbnb, and Rigetti—with a fondness for functional programming and open-source contributions in Python and Scala. His work spans low-level quantum control and practical developer tooling, including improving OpenQASM documentation and core quantum libraries like pyQuil. An entrepreneurial thinker who co-founded a startup and wrote on programming composition, he pairs hands-on coding with mentoring and org-building to turn research into production impact. Outside work he reads widely, enjoys long conversational walks, and competes in an obscure Canadian winter sport.
11 years of coding experience
10 years of employment as a software developer
School of Continuing Studies, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies, School of Continuing Studies, Entrepreneurship/Entrepreneurial Studies at University of TorontoBachelor's Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science at University of Saskatchewan
French, English
Stackoverflow
820reputation
15kreached
3answers
15questions
Github Skills (19)
parser10
python10
parsing10
parse10
quantum-computing10
quil10
documentation10
apidoc9
api9
error-handling9
testing7
refinery-cms6
mongodb6
ruby-on-rails6
mongoid6
Programming languages (13)
Github contributions (5)
openqasm/openqasm
Dec 2020 - Oct 2022
Quantum assembly language for extended quantum circuits
Role in this project:
Technical Writer
Technical WriterContributions:92 reviews, 56 commits, 11 PRs in 1 year 10 months
Contributions summary:Steven's contributions primarily involve improving the documentation of the OpenQASM language, specifically focusing on the OpenPulse grammar and its features. Their work includes adding detailed explanations of OpenPulse instructions, frames, channels, and their interactions. They corrected typos and clarified language, thereby enhancing the readability and understanding of the OpenQASM specification, particularly the pulse-level programming capabilities.
assemblyquantum-computingquantum-informationopenqasm
rigetti/pyquil
Oct 2017 - Oct 2018
A Python library for quantum programming using Quil.
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & Programmer
Back-end Developer & ProgrammerContributions:21 commits, 86 PRs, 114 pushes in 1 year
Contributions summary:Steven's commits primarily focused on the development and maintenance of the pyQuil library, which is used for quantum programming with Quil. Their contributions included refactoring configuration and QPU connection handling, improving error messages and providing better feedback to the user. A substantial part of their work involved integrating the Quil grammar, adding error handling, and improving the functionality of the program. The user made improvements to the PyQuil implementation, making it more functional and fixing several issues within the core library components.
pythonforestquilquantum-computingquantum-programming
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