Software Engineer, Host Assurance

Jobtailor; California (MO); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor is seeking a skilled engineer to design, build, and operate a Host Assurance platform ensuring secure trust from delivery through orchestration. You will collaborate across provisioning, fleet, and security teams to enforce host trust properties and reduce operational burden.

You will own components end-to-end, define readiness criteria, and contribute to reliable, scalable production systems with on-call responsibilities. US office three days/week is expected.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating reliable production systems at scale.
• Depth in distributed systems, backend or platform engineering, operating systems, or infrastructure security.
• Experience with PKI, HSMs, machine identity, attestation, secure boot, or hardware security is valuable.
• Ability to reason across services, APIs, and host software.
• Ability to learn boot, firmware, and hardware trust mechanisms.
• Sound judgment regarding trust boundaries, correctness, and safe failure behavior.
• Experience writing production-quality code.
• Ability to reason clearly about failure modes, operational safety, and long-term maintainability.
• Experience supporting critical production systems at scale, such as being on-call.
• Willingness to work across disciplines.
• Ability to work from a US office three days per week.
• Background checks may be administered in accordance with applicable law

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate Host Assurance platform components establishing trust in bare-metal and VM hosts before production eligibility.
• Ensure hosts are verifiably trustworthy from delivery and installation through secure bootstrap and readiness to join orchestration systems.
• Build and improve machine identity, certificate issuance and enrollment, HSM-backed or key-management-backed trust services, host attestation, measurement, and baseline verification tooling.
• Validate delivered hardware and firmware against vendor claims and detect and manage drift over time.
• Eliminate insecure bootstrap patterns while preserving deployment throughput and operational reliability.
• Partner with provisioning, fleet, and orchestration teams to deliver secure paved paths.
• Own software components through implementation, operational readiness, launch, and ongoing operation.
• Define readiness criteria and validate behavior under load and failure.
• Establish monitoring and actionable alerts, plan staged rollouts and tested recovery procedures, and maintain runbooks.
• Use production experience to improve reliability and reduce operational burden.
• Participate in production support via on-call rotation.
• Define observable and testable security properties for host platforms.
• Improve telemetry and validation needed to enforce host security properties.
• Work across deployment models and provider boundaries while maintaining consistent host trust outcomes.
• Partner with infrastructure, research, and confidential computing initiatives

Skills

Strong software engineering

Distributed systems

Infrastructure security

Production-quality code

Reasoning across services

Boot/firmware security awareness

On-call production support

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Tools

HSMs

PKI

Orchestration Systems

Monitoring Tools

Runbooks

Job description

• Design, build, and operate Host Assurance platform components establishing trust in bare-metal and VM hosts before production eligibility
• Ensure hosts are verifiably trustworthy from delivery and installation through secure bootstrap and readiness to join orchestration systems
• Build and improve machine identity, certificate issuance and enrollment, HSM-backed or key-management-backed trust services, host attestation, measurement, and baseline verification tooling
• Validate delivered hardware and firmware against vendor claims and detect and manage drift over time
• Eliminate insecure bootstrap patterns while preserving deployment throughput and operational reliability
• Partner with provisioning, fleet, and orchestration teams to deliver secure paved paths
• Own software components through implementation, operational readiness, launch, and ongoing operation
• Define readiness criteria and validate behavior under load and failure
• Establish monitoring and actionable alerts, plan staged rollouts and tested recovery procedures, and maintain runbooks
• Use production experience to improve reliability and reduce operational burden
• Participate in production support via on-call rotation
• Define observable and testable security properties for host platforms
• Improve telemetry and validation needed to enforce host security properties
• Work across deployment models and provider boundaries while maintaining consistent host trust outcomes
• Partner with infrastructure, research, and confidential computing initiatives

Requirements

• Strong software engineering experience building and operating reliable production systems at scale
• Depth in distributed systems, backend or platform engineering, operating systems, or infrastructure security
• Experience with PKI, HSMs, machine identity, attestation, secure boot, or hardware security is valuable but not required
• Ability to reason across services, APIs, and host software
• Ability to learn boot, firmware, and hardware trust mechanisms
• Sound judgment regarding trust boundaries, correctness, and safe failure behavior
• Experience writing production-quality code
• Ability to reason clearly about failure modes, operational safety, and long-term maintainability
• Experience supporting critical production systems at scale, such as being on-call
• Willingness to work across disciplines
• Ability to work from a US office three days per week
• Background checks may be administered in accordance with applicable law

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expertise in building and operating reliable production systems at scale, with a focus on distributed systems, infrastructure security, and host trust mechanisms. Proficient in defining security properties and improving operational reliability through effective monitoring and recovery procedures.

Highest-signal resume keywords

• Software Engineering Experience
• Distributed Systems
• Infrastructure Security
• Production-Quality Code
• PKI and HSM Experience

Hard Skills

• Production Systems
• Backend Engineering
• Operating Systems
• Machine Identity
• Host Attestation
• Secure Boot
• Telemetry Improvement
• Failure Mode Reasoning
• Operational Safety
• Long-Term Maintainability

Soft Skills

• Sound Judgment
• Willingness to Work Across Disciplines

Industry Keywords

• Trust Boundaries
• Secure Bootstrap
• Production Support
• Deployment Models
• Critical Production Systems

Tools & Technologies

• HSM
• PKI
• Orchestration Systems
• Monitoring Tools
• Runbooks