Platform Security Engineer, OpenBMC

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 364,500 - 445,500; Full time

Job summary

Anthropic is seeking a firmware engineer to build the OpenBMC-based management firmware for their servers. You will ensure the firmware is secure while overseeing its production and manageability features.

The ideal candidate should have extensive experience with OpenBMC and a strong focus on security principles, ideally with 8+ years in systems security and strong communication skills. Anthropic offers a competitive salary and a hybrid work policy.

Qualifications

• Strong technical cross-functional leadership skills, direction setting.
• Hands-on OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience on x86 and/or Arm.
• Strong C/C++ and Python skills with Linux fundamentals.
• A security mindset applied to firmware, not bolted on afterward.
• Clear communication across internal teams and external vendors.
• Ability to work effectively across hardware and software boundaries.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and ship OpenBMC firmware for x86 and Arm.
• Own the BMC security posture and lead threat modeling.
• Build verification tooling: static analysis, fuzzing, CI gating.

Skills

Cross-functional leadership

OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience

C/C++ and Python

Linux fundamentals

Security mindset

Debugging skills

Clear communication

Work across hardware/software boundaries

Knowledge of NIST firmware security

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Job description

About the role

Anthropic is standing up a founding team to own the OpenBMC-based management firmware running across its server fleet. You would be one of the first engineers on it. That means production firmware and manageability features (board bring-up through production) on one side, and hardening that firmware against sophisticated adversaries on the other.

Security is a first-class constraint in everything you ship: you'll write firmware to a high security bar and partner closely with our firmware security and hardware engineers on secure boot, signing, and attestation.

Key responsibilities

Production and manageability:

• Design, build, and ship OpenBMC firmware and manageability features for x86 and Arm (including GPU) platforms, from bring-up through production, using Yocto/OpenEmbedded
• Build the management stack on DMTF/OCP standards (MCTP, PLDM, SPDM, Redfish, RDE) and IPMI/KCS: sensors, telemetry, inventory, logging, RAS
• Implement BMC-to-BIOS/host communications, eSPI/LPC, thermal/fan/power management (PMBus)
• Work the hardware/firmware boundary: I2C/I3C, SPI, PCIe, SMBus, device trees, U-Boot, Linux

Security and hardening:

• Own the BMC security posture: secure and measured boot, root of trust, attestation (SPDM), authenticated update (PLDM FW Update), rollback protection, attack-surface reduction
• Lead threat modeling and secure design reviews; run coordinated vulnerability disclosure with vendors and the upstream community
• Build verification tooling: static analysis, fuzzing, firmware extraction, CI gating

Minimum qualifications

• Strong technical cross-functional leadership skills, direction setting
• Hands-on OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience on x86 and/or Arm, from bring-up through production with hands-on D-Bus/sdbusplus
• Strong C/C++ and Python, deep Linux user-space/kernel fundamentals, and Yocto/OpenEmbedded proficiency
• A security mindset applied to firmware, not bolted on afterward
• Upstream contributions to OpenBMC, U-Boot, DMTF, or OCP
• Working knowledge of out-of-band and in-band management, the relevant DMTF specs, and the device interfaces they run over
• Strong debugging and a track record of shipping reliable, well-tested code.
• Clear communication across internal teams and external vendors
• Ability to work effectively across hardware and software boundaries
• Knowledge of NIST firmware security guidelines and hardware security frameworks, specifically SP 800-193 and 800-147/155

Preferred qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in systems security, with at least 5 years focused on firmware and hardware security (firmware, bootloaders, and OS-level security)
• Hardware roots of trust and attestation: Caliptra, OCP S.A.F.E., TPM/HRoT, SPDM
• Memory-safe systems code in Rust or Zig
• Firmware vulnerability research, reverse-engineering, or fuzzing
• Previous work with AI/ML infrastructure security

Annual Salary

$405,000 — $405,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.