Role Overview
We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to develop embedded security firmware for advanced hardware platforms requiring physical tamper detection, secure boot, cryptographic key protection, and real-time threat response.
This is a hands-on engineering role combining real-time embedded development, low-power firmware, sensor acquisition, digital signal processing, hardware security, and system integration.
You will develop software capable of detecting physical intrusion and abnormal events while distinguishing genuine security threats from environmental noise, vibration, and transient conditions. The role involves independent ownership of complex firmware subsystems and close collaboration with hardware, security, systems, manufacturing, and validation teams.
Key Responsibilities
Embedded Security Firmware
- Develop real-time firmware in C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers using Zephyr RTOS or comparable RTOS environments.
- Develop software for ultra-low-power, always-on and battery-backed systems.
- Implement secure boot using MCUboot or equivalent, including signed firmware, image authentication, and secure update mechanisms.
- Implement cryptographic key lifecycle management including provisioning, protected storage, device identity, and secure zeroization.
- Develop tamper-response mechanisms including event latching, secure/tamper-evident logging, anti-rollback, secure debug control, and lifecycle-state enforcement.
- Ensure sensitive cryptographic material and protected data are reliably erased when confirmed tamper conditions occur.
Sensor Acquisition & Signal Processing
- Develop sensor acquisition pipelines covering ADC interfaces, sampling strategies, sensor drivers, and analog/digital sensor front ends.
- Apply digital signal processing (DSP) techniques including filtering, spectral analysis, signal characterization, and feature extraction.
- Develop algorithms capable of distinguishing genuine tamper events from noise, vibration, temperature/environmental effects, and transient disturbances.
- Tune detection thresholds and classification approaches to minimize false positives and missed events.
- Support data collection, analysis, characterization, and validation of tamper-detection performance.
- Apply edge-ML or lightweight embedded classification techniques where appropriate.
Platform & System Integration
- Perform MCU/SoC platform bring-up across NXP and similar embedded platforms, including BSP integration, peripheral enablement, driver development, and debugging.
- Support integration with higher-performance host computing platforms, including NVIDIA-based environments where applicable.
- Support Linux/Yocto environments for host-side integration.
- Integrate security firmware with host systems through UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, and network interfaces.
- Implement alert reporting, telemetry, status monitoring, and secure command/control interfaces.
- Work closely with hardware, FPGA, security, systems, manufacturing, and test engineers on end-to-end integration and validation.
Security Engineering & Compliance
- Contribute to threat modelling, vulnerability assessments, attack-surface analysis, and secure-code reviews for embedded platforms.
- Support hardware-backed security capabilities including root of trust, device identity, secure key storage, encrypted communications, and secure debug.
- Produce engineering evidence supporting security certification and assurance activities including ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria, and related standards.
- Support production-security operations including fuse programming, root-of-trust provisioning, device identity provisioning, secure factory flashing, and manufacturing test processes.
Quality & Engineering
- Deliver production-quality firmware using Git, CI/CD, automated unit testing, integration testing, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.
- Participate in architecture reviews, code reviews, design reviews, estimation, and technical planning.
- Maintain clear documentation covering software architecture, interfaces, security controls, and test procedures.
- Mentor junior engineers and provide technical guidance within embedded security and firmware development.
Experience
- 5 to 8+ years of embedded software/firmware development experience.
- Proven experience delivering firmware through development, hardware integration, verification, validation, and production.
- Experience within embedded security, aerospace, secure communications, industrial systems, automotive, robotics, or other safety/security-critical products is highly relevant.
- Strong experience working directly with multidisciplinary hardware and software engineering teams.
Technical Skills
- Advanced C/C++ for ARM Cortex-M microcontrollers.
- Strong understanding of real-time constraints, interrupt-driven architecture, memory-constrained systems, and low-level firmware development.
- Hands-on experience with Zephyr RTOS, or strong experience with FreeRTOS, ThreadX, or similar platforms with the ability to transition to Zephyr.
- Strong DSP and sensor signal-processing experience, including ADC acquisition, digital filtering, spectral analysis, feature extraction, and anomaly/event detection.
- Experience developing signal-processing algorithms operating in noisy, vibration-heavy, real-world environments.
- Experience with MCUboot or equivalent secure-boot technologies, signed firmware, and secure firmware updates.
- Embedded security experience covering hardware root of trust, TEE concepts, key provisioning, key zeroization, encrypted communication, anti-rollback, and secure debug control.
- MCU/SoC platform bring-up experience covering BSP integration, boot-chain validation, peripheral enablement, driver integration, and platform debugging.
- Experience with NXP and/or NVIDIA platforms is advantageous.
- Familiarity with Linux/Yocto for integration with host systems.
- Experience with UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, ADCs, and embedded peripheral interfaces.
- Strong low-power embedded development experience including sleep states, power budgeting, wake-up strategies, and battery-backed always-on operation.
- Experience with Git, CI/CD, automated testing, and HIL environments.
- Knowledge of Docker is advantageous.
- Edge-ML or embedded classification experience is beneficial.
Education & Additional Experience
- BSc or MSc in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, Computer Engineering, or a related discipline.
- Exposure to security certification frameworks such as ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria, or IEC 62443 is highly desirable.
- Familiarity with flight-control technologies such as PX4/MAVLink is advantageous but not required.
- Contributions to Zephyr, MCUboot, or other embedded/security open-source projects are valued.
Industry / Domain
Embedded Security | Secure Firmware | Hardware Tamper Protection | Real-Time Embedded Systems | Safety & Security-Critical Systems
