Purpose
This is a curated list of online Quantum Computing courses that are available at the time of writing. As someone that was hired into the industry from a computer science (rather than a physics) background, I appreciated the availability of high-quality coursework and learning resources to close the gap between my existing experience and the requirements of that role. Note the careful language there.
The following courses are selected in that context of beginning the journey from some implied technical ability, to a level that one might contribute either to the industry in a role directly (be it employment or via open source projects), or via some other adjacent activity. There are courses that are popular with Venture Capital teams, as one example, who aim to get up to speed on not only the context of the sector, but pattern match the kinds of themes and language and progress being made. All of which is to say, there's a lot of paths in and around Deep Tech, and no knowledge is wasted over the long arc of innovation. Get stuck in and drop me a line if you find any of these useful.
Microsoft Azure Quantum
The Microsoft learning resources for quantum computing are specifically based around their Azure Quantum platform. And they are exceptionally well crafted. If you're a software engineer already in the Microsoft ecosystem (particularly Azure) then this will be a smooth and familiar experience.
The resources are set up as a "Learning Path" in their training library that includes six modules. The training uses a mix of different methods to interact with the content, such as the dedicated online Azure Quantum Coding interface (which offers the Copilot AI chat interface on the side to help you learn), hosted Notebooks in the Workspace in Azure's Portal, and via a QDK extension for VS Code. The bulk of the serious work will be in VS Code or via the hosted Notepads, while the coding interface is a learning tool found under the "Tools" menu on the Quantum Coding part of the site. If that sounds like a lot to take in, don't worry, the first modules of the learning path walk you through each of these with practical exercises, helping familiarise you with the resources while learning. As a former technical writer myself, I'm really impressed with the care and attention to detail here.
The following links show the learning path and the included modules at the time of writing, and are shown as an indicator of the gentle way Microsoft walks you through the content from a developer's perspective raqther than a Physics lesson. This is a great first start because you will have run a quantum circuit wihtin the first hour, and seen the inputs and outputs of a wuantum computing workflow, which I think helps those of us from a technical and non-physics background who really want to see "what this actually does".
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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/paths/quantum-computing-fundamentals/
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/resources/training-and-certifications/quantum-computing/
IBM Qiskit
The IBM Quantum team are quite simply exceptional, and those of us working for othe quantum companies tend to refer to their training material and community outreach as an industry standard. It's worth noting that IBM made some changes to it's learning materials, communkty projects, and various resources as part of the strategic refocusing around "quantum utility" and the SystemTwo hardware.
What this means for you as a learner is just to be aware that the current IBM Quantum platform and training is a more streamlined and updated version of various resources you might see on old videos, blog posts, or training guides. Now is a good time to learn, as the Qiskit framework was pulled back into IBM proper and updated to the major 1.0 milestone (and the excellent documentation does a great job to point out breaking changes with older versions).
I'll also add that it's worth understanding that a big part of the IBM Quantum messaging of the "quantum utility" phase is that the avilable IBM Quantum hardware is now running more qubits than can be realistically simulated on standard hardware. This is partly why they retired the IBM quantum simulator service, previously a series of GPUs/CPUs running hosted simulatrs that you could access for free online. The idea is that you can easily run smaller workflos and compose smaller algorithms/circuits on your system, but for the big stuff that IBM wants to excel at, you've got the hardware available. If you need something in the middle, vendors like qBraid or even Amazon's Braket, Microsoft's Azure Quantum, etc, will fill that gap.
In any case,
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In my time at another quantum computing company, I would use IBM as the reference for community resources and training, and they've only gotten better with a strategic and brand overhaul. The overall Qiskit project has had the full geneal availbility of Qiskit 1.0, and has now been pulled into IBM proper (I used to think of Qiskit being to IBM like we maintained the Fedora OS as the community version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux). And the IBM Quantum platform itself has evolved, dropping their hosted simulators to focus on encouraging you to learn to use their actual quantum hardware to run workloads larger than what could otherwise be simulated on a classical computer.
What this means for you is a learning experience that starts out with basic "hello world" content
Q-CTRL Black Open
Something I really appreciate baout th econtent from Q-CTRL is that it takes a practical approach to showing some real-world potential use cases for a quantum computer. Such as a n interactive graphical lesson showing how aerodynamiocs would use quatum computing to explore plane design.
This contextual education is great for decisionmakers outside of technical or scientific roles. When I've spoken to the Q0CTRL team, back when we worke dout of the same Quantum Terminal building in Sydney while I was working at Quantum Brilliance, I loved heraring stories about the users of Black Opal being everythign from venture capitalists (trying to understand the domain area better), to erferferfer, people in the military. When the FAANG layoffs happened in the days before a talk I did at The Lionux Confenrence open source summit a while back, I basially sent everyong to lakcv opal.