SoC Offensive Security Staff Engineer

Job Title

SoC Offensive Security Staff Engineer

Role Summary

Work on Arm's SoC Offensive Security team to perform adversarial security assessments across pre- and post-silicon platforms, firmware, and architectural specifications. The role focuses on identifying integration- and microarchitecture-level vulnerabilities and influencing mitigations across silicon programs.

Hybrid role based in Austin, working with internal security researchers and product teams to improve threat models, tools, and security architecture.

Experience Level

Senior / Staff-level (senior technical contributor). No explicit years-of-experience stated.

Responsibilities

Primary accountabilities for the role include:

• Perform adversarial analysis of SoC and chiplet micro-architectures across pre-silicon and post-silicon environments.
• Review architecture, micro-architecture, system specifications, RTL, and firmware to identify security weaknesses.
• Develop PoCs, exploits, and security demonstrations to show practical impact of findings.
• Use automation, scripting, and AI-assisted techniques to scale vulnerability discovery, test generation, and triage.
• Investigate multi-stage and cross-component attack chains beyond standard threat models and verification.
• Participate in design reviews, security workshops, and hackathons to create and validate new threat scenarios.
• Collaborate with engineering teams to propose and validate mitigations and improve security architectures and threat models.
• Contribute to offensive security methodologies, tools, and best practices for the team.

Requirements

Must-have technical skills and experience:

• Strong knowledge of SoC architecture, IP integration, and enumerating micro-architectural attack surfaces.
• Proven experience conducting adversarial assessments with PoCs, exploits, CTFs, or published research.
• Practical experience with SystemVerilog RTL, UVM-based validation environments, and HW development IDEs; able to adapt verification environments for offensive testing.
• Hands-on lab experience setting up development and test platforms and validating findings in practical environments.
• Firmware security analysis experience (e.g., UEFI, uBoot, MCUBoot, Trusted Firmware or similar).
• Familiarity with security specifications/standards such as Caliptra, DICE, or hardware root-of-trust and attestation concepts.
• Strong problem-solving skills, independent investigative ability, and effective communication to influence design teams.

Nice-to-have:

• Familiarity with hardware interfaces (PCIe, CXL, SMBus, SPI, I2C, UART) and AMBA interconnects (AXI, CHI, CXS, APB, etc.).
• Experience with hardware fuzzing, formal proof tools for HW security, TEEs, reverse engineering, and software exploitation techniques.
• Contributions to standards bodies or participation in security working groups.

Education Requirements

Not specified.

About the Company

Company: Arm

Headquarters: Cambridge, United Kingdom

ARM is a global leader in semiconductor and software design, driving innovation in computing technology. The company specializes in designing processors and systems that provide the essential building blocks for electronic devices. ARM's architecture is widely used in smartphones, servers, and IoT devices, and its collaborative culture fosters bold thinking, diversity, and high-impact benefits for its talented workforce.