Senior Firmware Security Architect, Networking

NVIDIA Corporation; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 184,000 - 357,000; Full time

Job summary

NVIDIA Corporation's Networking product security team seeks a technical security architect with hands-on experience to strengthen the security posture of networking firmware. You will partner with firmware, hardware, and architecture groups to reduce risk while enabling new security features affecting devices worldwide.

You will lead threat modeling, define security requirements, review designs, and drive secure development practices from provisioning to field updates.

Qualifications

• Academic degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• Demonstrated experience of 8+ years in product security, firmware security, or security research, including hands-on work with embedded or firmware codebases.
• Experience defining security policy models — authorization schemes, RBAC, and administrative role separation — including how policy is expressed, enforced, and administered in production.
• Familiarity with applied cryptography (including secure boot, code signing, and attestation), threat modeling, common attack vectors, and mitigation techniques.

Responsibilities

• Be involved in the security architecture of NVIDIA Networking firmware — trust boundaries, privilege separation between firmware domains, device identity and key storage, secure boot and chain of trust, and secure update and anti‑rollback flows.
• Perform security threat modeling of firmware and embedded subsystems across NVIDIA Networking products.
• Analyze complex firmware and hardware/firmware interactions to identify security weaknesses, including boot flows, privileged execution environments, and host‑and network‑facing management interfaces.
• Define security features and mitigations spanning the full device lifecycle — provisioning, attestation, debug authorization, runtime hardening, and field update.
• Guide the engineering teams throughout the implementation.
• Translate threat models into actionable security requirements and architectural decisions, and review designs and implementations against them.

Skills

Security architecture

Threat modeling

Cryptography

Firmware security

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE or related field

MSc/PhD in related field

Tools

Static analysis tooling

Fuzzing

Firmware development tools

Job description

NVIDIA Networking product security team is looking for an outstanding technical security architect with hands‑on experience to help us improve the security posture of NVIDIA networking products. In this role you will partner with firmware, hardware, and architecture teams on the security architecture, to reduce risk, threats, and vulnerabilities while driving new security features that affect millions of devices all over the world!

What you’ll be doing:

Be involved in the security architecture of NVIDIA Networking firmware — trust boundaries, privilege separation between firmware domains, device identity and key storage, secure boot and chain of trust, and secure update and anti‑rollback flows.

Perform security threat modeling of firmware and embedded subsystems across NVIDIA Networking products.

Analyze complex firmware and hardware/firmware interactions to identify security weaknesses, including boot flows, privileged execution environments, and host‑and network‑facing management interfaces.

Define security features and mitigations spanning the full device lifecycle — provisioning, attestation, debug authorization, runtime hardening, and field update.

Guide the engineering teams throughout the implementation.

Translate threat models into actionable security requirements and architectural decisions, and review designs and implementations against them.

Partner with hardware and ASIC architects to specify the security primitives firmware depends on, and define how they are used across the product line.

Drive secure development practices for firmware — memory‑safe coding patterns in C, static analysis, and fuzzing of firmware‑exposed interfaces — and make sure development processes meet security and coding standards.

What we need to see:

Academic degree in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Demonstrated experience of 8+ years in product security, firmware security, or security research, including hands‑on work with embedded or firmware codebases.

Experience defining security policy models — authorization schemes, RBAC, and administrative role separation — including how policy is expressed, enforced, and administered in production.

Familiarity with applied cryptography (including secure boot, code signing, and attestation), threat modeling, common attack vectors, and mitigation techniques.

Ability to work independently, and collaboratively in a constantly evolving environment.

Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

M.Sc. or PhD in computer science, electrical engineering, or related technical field.

Experience with hardware/software interfaces in networking devices — register and MMIO programming models, DMA, mailbox and doorbell mechanisms, PCIe configuration and management interfaces, and the firmware that drives them.

Experience with hardware roots of trust and hardware‑enforced isolation (MPU/MMU, secure enclaves, fuse/OTP‑based provisioning) in SoCs or ASICs.

Hands‑on experience with networking software — device drivers, control plane, management interfaces, or embedded network operating systems — and an understanding of how these components interact with firmware.

Familiarity with high‑scale deployment, the data center security ecosystem and its operational challenges.

With highly competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package, NVIDIA is widely considered to be one of the technology world's most desirable employers. We have some of the most forward‑thinking and hardworking people on the planet working for us and, due to unprecedented growth, our special engineering teams are growing fast. If you're a creative and autonomous engineer with a genuine passion for technology, we want to hear from you.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 184,000 USD - 287,500 USD for Level 4, and 224,000 USD - 356,500 USD for Level 5. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until October 23, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing. Today, our AI infrastructure powers global intelligence, transforming every industry. Learn more about NVIDIA.