Senior Embedded Security Engineer, Flight Software

Your job is to find the weaknesses in our spacecraft before an adversary does. These vehicles operate in remote, contested environments, where a defect can mean loss of mission. Once one is on orbit you do not get it back, you do not get a patch window on your terms, and you do not get a second opinion. Your job is to find every weakness in the silicon, the firmware, the radios, and the software before the vehicle leaves the ground. What survives your test program could become a mission failure on orbit. 

You will take flight hardware apart, with physical access being the beginning of the exercise rather than the end of it. Once you are on the board, we expect you to pivot to the software and go for root. Chain the bugs, escalate, persist, and prove out the full path an adversary would take. You will deliver the findings and the reproducible test plans that show our flight software and hardware engineers exactly where they stand, then work alongside them to close what you found. 

This is an ideal role for someone who works at the intersection of hardware and software security, who would rather break a system than read about it being broken, and who wants that work to matter on a vehicle that cannot be recalled. It carries significant technical ownership and direct access to the engineers building the vehicles. 

This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance. 

Responsibilities 

Own the capability 

• Advance True Anomaly's hardware security lab: tooling selection, bench design, budget case, and test methodology 

• Own the security test plan for spacecraft hardware, radios, and flight software, and the schedule it runs on 

Hardware and radios 

• Perform invasive and non-invasive hardware attacks against flight hardware: side-channel analysis, fault injection (voltage, clock, EM), chip desoldering and rework, decapping, and exploitation of embedded debug and bus interfaces (JTAG, SWD, UART, SPI, I2C) 

• Extract and reverse engineer firmware across the architectures our hardware runs on 

• Analyze wired and wireless protocols, including RF links, proprietary protocols, and spacecraft command and telemetry paths 

Software 

• Pivot from hardware access to software exploitation: identify memory corruption and logic flaws, chain them, and escalate toward full system control 

• Build coverage-guided and protocol fuzzing harnesses (AFL++, libFuzzer) and emulation-based rigs (QEMU, Unicorn) to decouple testing from hardware availability 

• Root-cause findings and develop proof-of-concept exploits that demonstrate real impact and drive remediation priority 

• Assess post-exploitation impact and the effectiveness of isolation, key handling, and recovery mechanisms 

• Conduct security code review of flight software in C/C++ alongside binary analysis 

Close the loop 

• Publish findings with reproducible test plans, retest after remediation, and build automated triage and coverage analysis to keep results legible at scale 

• Work with flight software and hardware engineers to implement fixes across memory safety, secure boot, cryptographic key management, and runtime hardening 

• Perform threat modeling and security architecture review accounting for a sophisticated adversary and a non-recoverable asset 

• Integrate security testing into HIL/SIL infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines, and support operational spacecraft with monitoring and incident response 

Qualifications 

Strong candidates tend to arrive from one of two directions: embedded systems engineers who moved into offensive security, or hardware and firmware security researchers who can write and review production C/C++. Real depth on both sides is rare and we are not expecting it on day one. Tell us which side you come from. 

A good candidate will have: 

• 5+ years of hands-on experience across embedded systems security, hardware security, or offensive security against firmware and embedded targets 

• Hands-on offensive hardware experience on real boards, including side-channel analysis, voltage or clock glitching, electromagnetic fault injection, chip desoldering and rework, and decapping 

• Practical experience attacking embedded debug and bus interfaces (JTAG, SWD, UART, SPI, I2C), including sniffing, injection, and firmware extraction 

• A track record of independently discovering, validating, and root-causing vulnerabilities in embedded systems, firmware, or hardware 

• Firmware reverse engineering across common embedded architectures, using tools such as Ghidra, IDA, or binwalk 

• Solid grounding in exploitation fundamentals on constrained targets: memory corruption, exploit primitives, the mitigations you will run into, and escalation toward full system control 

• Experience building your own tooling rather than only running off-the-shelf tools: coverage-guided or protocol fuzzing harnesses (AFL++, libFuzzer), emulation-based rigs (QEMU, Unicorn), test fixtures, and bench instrumentation 

• Experience analyzing protocols, wired or wireless or proprietary, and reasoning about both design and implementation weaknesses 

• Strong C/C++ skills with deep understanding of memory safety and secure coding practices, sufficient to review flight software at the source level 

• Working understanding of hardware root of trust and secure boot, whether from implementing them or from breaking them 

• Proficiency with embedded toolchains, debuggers, static analysis tools, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers, backed by strong debugging skills 

• Ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance 

An ideal candidate will also have: 

• An already-active TS/SCI security clearance 

• Experience using Ghommit tool. 

• Direct experience in spacecraft or satellite embedded software, or other aerospace safety-critical systems 

• Experience with RF and wireless security, or with software-defined radio (SDR) 

• Experience attacking or securing real-time and safety-critical systems, including timing constraints, deterministic execution, and interrupt handling 

• Experience implementing secure firmware update mechanisms and anti-tamper techniques 

• Experience implementing a hardware root of trust, secure boot, or key provisioning on a shipped product 

• Knowledge of hardware security modules (HSMs) and secure elements 

• Experience with HIL or SIL test infrastructure and embedded Linux build systems (Yocto, NixOS) 

• Familiarity with space-specific protocols and standards (CCSDS, ECSS) 

• A public track record of impact: CVEs, published research, conference talks, CTF results, or open-source security tooling 

Compensation 

Base Salary 

• Long Beach, CA: $180,000 to $255,000 

• Denver, CO: $170,000 to $240,000 
• SF Bay Area, CA: $200,000 to $280,000 

• Work Location: this role will be fully onsite at our facilities in Centennial, CO, SF Bay Area, or Long Beach, CA  #LI-Onsite
• This role operates in a fast-paced, high-stakes environment where rapid decision-making and adaptability are essential
• Bias towards delivery and iteration to discover the right use cases for security investments
• Must be comfortable taking calculated risks and owning accountability for managing those risks
• Passionate about solving real-world security problems in resource-constrained embedded environments
• Collaborative culture with opportunities for significant ownership and technical leadership
• Direct access to leadership and opportunity to influence spacecraft security architecture