Quantum Programming Core (D-Wave)

D-Wave’s core developer training is the most comprehensive hands-on course for quantum optimization programming available from any quantum hardware vendor. It goes well beyond conceptual overviews into actual Ocean SDK programming, QUBO construction, hybrid solver usage, and performance benchmarking — with direct access to D-Wave experts through virtual office hours.

What you’ll learn

• D-Wave product and hardware overview: Advantage system architecture, qubit topology, and the role of the Pegasus graph
• Problem formulation: translating real-world optimization problems into QUBO and Ising model representations
• Penalty functions: how to encode constraints into unconstrained QUBO objectives
• Ocean SDK programming: using BinaryQuadraticModel, samplers, and the full Ocean toolchain
• Hybrid solvers: LeapHybridSampler and when to use hybrid vs. direct QPU solving
• Embedding: how logical problems are mapped to the physical qubit topology
• Constraint handling: approaches for hard and soft constraints in QUBO problems
• Solver selection and benchmarking: how to compare D-Wave solutions to classical heuristics
• Real-world applications: portfolio optimization as a worked end-to-end example

Course structure

Approximately 35 hours total: one week of instruction through recorded presentations, quizzes, and assignments, followed by a one-week grace period. Multiple sessions are available throughout 2026 (May through September). Virtual office hours with D-Wave technical staff are included.

Prerequisites

• Intermediate Python programming skills (functions, classes, NumPy)
• Comfort with math equations and matrix operations
• No quantum computing background required, but completion of D-Wave’s free Introduction to Quantum Computing course is recommended

Learners who need to strengthen their Python and math foundations first should consider the optional Foundations for Quantum Programming preparatory course.

Who is this for?

Developers, data scientists, and operations research engineers who want to build production-grade quantum optimization applications on D-Wave hardware. The course is practical: you will write Ocean SDK code, run problems on D-Wave’s Advantage system, and understand how to benchmark results.

Context

At $1,000 per session, this is a significant investment. It is appropriate for developers whose organization is evaluating or deploying D-Wave for real optimization problems, or for engineers who want deep technical knowledge of quantum annealing before committing to a hardware partnership. For conceptual understanding without programming depth, D-Wave's Getting Started with Applied Quantum Optimization ($50) covers the business and problem formulation side at a fraction of the cost.