What are career prospects in Quantum Information and Computing?

It is hard to predict how big of an area this will be career-wise, but it is certainly a fascinating field. The advice I would have for you depends on what your current background and life stage are, but probably you should just try to learn about it or to learn background stuff that you need. I'm happy to give more specific advice if you have a more specific question.

Quantum computing is still a very new field, and no one is really sure if there will be a major breakthrough that makes it the "new big thing" or if it will be a niche field with interesting but limited applications.

If you are looking to work strictly in Quantum, you'll find most opportunities in academia, government/defense/intelligence community, or large data computing firms like IBM. These will be primarily research type roles, to search for a breakthrough application or use for the technology.

If you're looking to actually design, build, and market quantum computers (rather than just to research them) you'll find that there are a very small number of commercial companies that are currently working on engineering, producing, and marketing them at present. But there's not a large demand for quantum computer experts, because there's not a large market for them at present.

If you're looking to hedge your bet for the future, in the event quantum takes off, then make sure you also study plenty of traditional data, business intelligence, and other non-quantum computing topics so that you also have a general knowledge in computing, so you can more easily find a job.

This is undoubtedly a very hot area. And I'm sure you're aware that it's in its infancy. There are a few areas of extremely promising technologies that are gaining momentum as we speak. Internet of Things, Big Data, Robotics with AI... The first two are symbiotic in that the IOT is generating fantastic amounts of Big Data every moment, and this fuels AI, specifically Deep Learning and Machine Learning. This is the basis of the most rapid advances in autonomous vehicles, for example. Having said all that, I think a tremendous amount of potential for Quantum Computing is in this latter area -- advanced AI. Currently, there are obvious applications in Medicine -- specifically DNA analysis and drug research. Finance will be adopting applications for QC simply because of the enormous volume of data it can make use of. But you'll probably have to wait a bit for job prospects in other areas. But then, but "a bit", I mean not in the usual sense, but "a few years" -- i. e., just around the corner. What you may want to do is look for an area that will most certainly be adopting QC and try to make it happen yourself. There are many, many people who have no idea whether QC will be useful for them. You, however, are better prepared for this. So my answer to this is that your career prospects in QC are fantastic. But don't expect to find a lot of job listings that say, "Quantum Computer Scientist", just as you will find a lot of job listings that you know simply assume you'll be using computers but don't have "computer scientist" in the title. Bottom line is that your prospects are great, but likely very small compared to what they'll be very shortly.