Lattice studies of spontaneous supersymmetry breaking suffer from a sign problem that in principle can be evaded through novel methods enabled by quantum computing. Focusing on lower-dimensional lattice systems with more modest resource requirements, in particular the $\mathcal N = 1$ Wess--Zumino model in 1+1 dimensions, we are exploring ways quantum computing could be used to study spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. A particularly promising recent development is to apply the variational quantum deflation algorithm, which generalizes the variational quantum eigensolver so as to resolve multiple low-energy states.