Senior Software Engineer
Technology Innovation Institute Senior Software Engineer
Role Overview
As an experienced Senior Software Engineer specializing in embedded security and real-time firmware, you will design, implement, and maintain the embedded software for a physical tamper-detection system detecting and responding to physical intrusion on PCBs. Working with low-power MCUs, you will build the sensing, boot-security, and tamper-response software that protects cryptographic material and mission integrity.
This position requires deep proficiency in embedded C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class devices, hands-on experience with Zephyr (or a comparable RTOS), and strong digital signal processing skills: the systems you build must reliably distinguish genuine tamper events from benign environmental noise and vibration. You will work as a senior individual contributor within a multidisciplinary team of hardware, security, manufacturing, and certification engineers, taking independent ownership of complex firmware subsystems and mentoring junior engineers.
Industry / Domain
Defense & Aerospace / Embedded Security / Hardware Tamper Protection
Functional Activities
Embedded Security Firmware Development:
- Develop and maintain real-time firmware in C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class MCUs under Zephyr RTOS, optimized for ultra-low-power, always-on operation in battery-backed power domains.
- Implement secure boot chains (e.g., MCUboot), signed firmware images, and secure update mechanisms ensuring only authentic, unmodified code can run.
- Implement cryptographic key management on-device: provisioning, storage in hardware-protected domains, and reliable key/sensitive-data zeroization on confirmed tamper events.
- Develop tamper-response logic: event latching, tamper-evident logging, anti-rollback, secure debug control, and lifecycle-state enforcement.
Sensor Acquisition & Signal Processing:
- Design and implement sensor acquisition pipelines: ADC interfacing, sampling strategies, and driver development for analog and digital sensor front-ends.
- Apply DSP techniques, including digital filtering, spectral analysis, and feature extraction, to characterize sensor signals in noisy real-world environments.
- Develop and tune event-detection and classification algorithms that separate genuine tamper signatures from environmental noise, vibration, and transient disturbances, minimizing false positives without missing real events.
- Support data-collection campaigns and analysis workflows used to validate and improve detection performance.
Platform & System Integration:
- Perform SoC/MCU platform bring-up on NXP-based and NVIDIA-based platforms: BSP integration, boot-chain validation, peripheral enablement, driver integration, and platform debugging (Linux/Yocto on host platforms where applicable).
- Integrate tamper-protection firmware with host systems over standard interfaces (UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, network), including alert reporting, status telemetry, and command/control flows.
- Work with hardware, FPGA, security, and systems teams to validate end-to-end integration from sensor front-end to host-level response.
Security Engineering & Compliance:
- Contribute to threat modeling, vulnerability assessments, and secure-coding reviews for embedded targets.
- Produce design and implementation evidence supporting certification against hardware-security standards (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria).
- Support production security workflows: fuse burning, root-of-trust provisioning, device identity, factory flashing, and manufacturing test procedures.
Quality & Collaboration:
- Deliver well-tested firmware through CI/CD pipelines with automated unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.
- Participate actively in code reviews, design reviews, estimation, and agile ceremonies; mentor junior engineers within your areas of expertise.
- Document designs, interfaces, and test procedures to team standards.
Necessary Knowledge and Experience
- 5-8 years of professional embedded software development experience, with firmware shipped through integration, test, and production, preferably in defense, aerospace, or security-critical products.
- Strong C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class microcontrollers; solid grasp of real-time constraints, interrupt-driven design, and memory-constrained development.
- Hands-on experience with Zephyr RTOS or a comparable RTOS (FreeRTOS, ThreadX) and willingness to specialize in Zephyr.
- Demonstrable DSP and sensor signal-processing experience (required): ADC interfacing, digital filtering, spectral analysis, feature extraction, and event/anomaly detection in noisy environments. Edge-ML classification experience is a plus.
- Experience implementing embedded security features: secure boot (MCUboot or equivalent), signed firmware and secure update, hardware root of trust, TEE concepts, key provisioning and zeroization, encrypted communications, anti-rollback, and secure debug control.
- SoC platform bring-up experience (NXP and/or NVIDIA platforms preferred): BSP integration, boot-chain validation, peripheral enablement, driver integration, and platform debugging; Linux/Yocto familiarity for host-side integration.
- Low-power design experience: sleep-state management, power budgeting, and battery-backed always-on operation.
- Familiarity with secure development practices: threat modeling, secure coding standards, and vulnerability assessment for embedded targets.
- Proficiency with Git, CI/CD, automated testing, and HIL test setups; Docker familiarity is a plus.
- Strong English communication skills and proven ability to work with hardware, security, manufacturing, QA, and systems teams under pressure.
Education and Certification Requirements
- BSc or MSc in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, or a related discipline.
- Exposure to cryptographic-module or product security certification work (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria, or IEC 62443) is a strong plus.
- Basic understanding of flight-controller platforms (e.g., PX4/MAVLink) is a nice-to-have, not a requirement.
- Contributions to open-source embedded or security projects (e.g., Zephyr, MCUboot) are valued.