IBM Launches Its First Developer Certification

(TechCrunch) IBM has announced the launch of its first developer certification for programming quantum computers.
The “IBM Quantum Developer Certification,” as it’s officially called, focuses on IBM’s own software tools and especially Qiskit, its SDK for working with quantum computers. Qiskit has already proven quite popular, with more than 600,000 installs, and when IBM Quantum and the Qiskit team hosted a quantum summer school last year, almost 5,000 developers participated.
Abe Asfaw, the global lead for Quantum Education and Open Science at IBM, explained this is just the first of a series of planned quantum certifications. “What we’ve built is a multi-tiered developer certification.” “The first tier is what we’re releasing in this announcement and that tier gets developers introduced to how to work with quantum circuits. How do you use Qiskit […] to build out a quantum circuit and how do you run it on a quantum computer? And once you run it on a quantum computer, how do you look at the results and how do you interpret the results? This sets the stage for the next series of certifications that we’re developing, which are then going to be attached to use cases that are being explored in optimization, chemistry and finance. All of these can now be sort of integrated into the developer workflow once we have enabled someone to show that they can work with quantum circuits.”
He noted that IBM already often helps upskill developers (from its partner companies) who are interested in quantum computing. So far, though, this has been a very ad hoc process. With the new certification program, developers can now formally demonstrate their skills and show that they are in a position to utilize quantum computing in their workflow.