Platform Security Engineering - OpenBMC

job-boards.greenhouse.io- JobBoard; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 364,500 - 445,500; Full time

Job summary

Linuxconfig is seeking an experienced engineer to lead the development of OpenBMC-based management firmware. This critical role involves designing and shipping firmware for both x86 and Arm platforms while ensuring a high security standard throughout the firmware lifecycle.

The successful candidate must have at least 8 years of systems security experience, including significant experience in firmware security. The position offers a salary of $405,000.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in systems security with 5+ years focused on firmware and hardware security.
• Strong technical leadership skills.
• Upstream contributions to OpenBMC or similar.

Responsibilities

• Design and ship OpenBMC firmware for x86 and Arm platforms.
• Own the BMC security posture and lead secure design reviews.
• Build verification tooling for firmware.

Skills

Firmware security

C/C++ and Python

OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience

Linux fundamentals

Debugging skills

Cross-functional leadership

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

Yocto/OpenEmbedded

DMTF/OCP standards

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

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.

What You'll Do

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

Who You Are

• 8+ years of experience in systems security, with at least 5 years focused on firmware and hardware security (firmware, bootloaders, and OS‑level security)
• 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

Strong candidates may also have

• 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

Deadline to apply: None. Applications will be received on a rolling basis.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

$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.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. We believe that representation is important and strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.

Equal Employment Opportunity

As set forth in Anthropic’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

We comply with the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA) and provide inclusive opportunities for protected veterans. Protected veteran categories include disabled veterans, recently separated veterans, active duty wartime or campaign badge veterans, and armed forces service medal veterans.

We also encourage voluntary self‑identification of disability to help us meet our goal of inclusion for people with disabilities.