Offensive Hardware Security Engineer, Platform Security

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 320,000 - 405,000; Full time

Job summary

Anthropic is seeking a vulnerability assessment candidate for platform security. You will work across Anthropic and partners to audit hardware, firmware, bootloaders, and attestation systems to identify and remove vulnerabilities from the ground up.

This role requires expertise in low-level systems security and ownership to ensure fixes are eliminated in production, including preventing reintroduction of vulnerabilities. Hybrid in SF area with visa sponsorship where possible.

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on vulnerability auditing on security-critical systems.
• Experience with secure boot, measured boot, and attestation technologies (TPM, Intel TXT, AMD SEV, ARM TrustZone).
• Strong understanding of cryptographic protocols and hardware security modules.
• Experience with UEFI/BIOS or embedded firmware security, bootloader hardening, and chain of trust implementation.
• Proficiency in C and assembly, and systems programming.

Responsibilities

• Audit secure boot chains from firmware through OS initialization across diverse hardware platforms.
• Audit attestation systems providing cryptographic proof of system state.
• Audit measured boot implementations and runtime integrity monitoring.
• Collaborate with infrastructure teams to integrate security controls without impacting training performance.
• Document security architectures and maintain threat models.
• Conduct firmware vulnerability assessments and penetration testing.
• Build firmware vulnerability assessment pipelines for continuous monitoring.
• Collaborate with vendors to ensure security capabilities meet requirements.

Skills

Vulnerability auditing

Secure boot/attestation

Low-level security

Cryptographic protocols

UEFI/BIOS security

Rust/Go security

Reverse engineering

Threat modeling

Cross-functional collaboration

Firmware/bootloader security

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

We’re seeking a vulnerability assessment candidate for platform security. You'll work cross functionally with teams across Anthropic and our partners to assess security features in hardware, firmware, bootloaders, operating systems, and attestation systems to identify and remove vulnerabilities from the ground up.

This role requires expertise in low-level systems security and the ability to audit the most security-critical platform elements. This is not a role where you can simply file a ticket and hope that the fixes get into production and stay in production. The role requires taking ownership that everything you find is eliminated fully and correctly in production, including ensuring known vulnerabilities are never reintroduced.

Key responsibilities

• Audit secure boot chains from firmware through OS initialization for diverse hardware platforms (CPUs, BMCs, switches, peripherals, and embedded microcontrollers)
• Audit attestation systems that provide cryptographic proof of system state from hardware root of trust through application layer
• Audit measured boot implementations and runtime integrity monitoring
• Integrate security controls with infrastructure teams without impacting training performance
• Validate security mechanisms before production deployment
• Conduct firmware vulnerability assessments and penetration testing
• Build firmware vulnerability assessment pipelines for continuous security monitoring
• Document security architectures and maintain threat models
• Collaborate with software and hardware vendors to ensure security capabilities meet our requirements for exploit mitigation

Minimum qualifications

• Proven track record of conducting hands‑on vulnerability auditing on complex, security‑critical systems
• Hands‑on experience with secure boot, measured boot, and attestation technologies (TPM, Intel TXT, AMD SEV, ARM TrustZone)
• Strong understanding of cryptographic protocols and hardware security modules
• Experience with UEFI/BIOS or embedded firmware security, bootloader hardening, and chain of trust implementation
• Proficiency in low‑level programming languages (C, Assembly) and systems programming
• Knowledge of firmware vulnerability assessment and threat modeling
• Ability to work effectively across hardware and software boundaries
• Strong communication and cross‑functional collaboration skills
• Track record of assessing security architectures for complex, distributed systems

Preferred qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in systems security, with at least 5 years focused on low‑level security (firmware, bootloaders, and OS kernel‑level security)
• Capacity to audit for logic bugs in code written in Rust or Go
• Ability to find vulnerabilities via reverse engineering in software that is provided only in binary form
• Experience performing fault injection & side‑channel analysis attacks on hardware
• Experience auditing silicon root of trust implementations
• Experience auditing confidential computing technologies and hardware‑based TEEs
• Background in formal verification or security proof techniques
• 5 or more talks at top‑tier security conferences with candidate listed as first author
• Experience using LLMs to automate security assessment (including tooling creation)
• Experience securing large‑scale HPC or cloud infrastructure
• Previous work with AI/ML infrastructure security

Annual Compensation

Annual Salary: $320,000 – $405,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. Minimum years of experience: years required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position.

Location‑based hybrid policy: staff expected in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. Some roles may require more office presence.

Visa sponsorship: Anthropic sponsors visas when possible.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Anthropic is an equal opportunity employer, welcoming all candidates.