Senior Embedded Security Engineer

Senior Embedded Security Engineer Denver, CO or Long Beach, CA or SF Bay Area, CA

Space is a warfighting domain. True Anomaly seeks those with the talent and ambition to build the technology that secures it.

True Anomaly delivers decisive capabilities for space superiority. We build autonomous spacecraft, advanced payloads, mission software, and space-based interceptors — enabling the U.S. and its Allies to secure the space environment and counter threats from the ultimate high ground.

True Anomaly values:

Be the offset. We create asymmetric advantages with creativity and ingenuity.

What would it take? We challenge assumptions to deliver ambitious results.

It's the people. Our team is our competitive advantage and we are better together.

Your mission

Your job is to find the weaknesses in our spacecraft before an adversary does. These vehicles operate in remote, contested environments, where a defect can mean loss of mission. Once one is on orbit you do not get it back, you do not get a patch window on your terms, and you do not get a second opinion. Your job is to find every weakness in the silicon, the firmware, the radios, and the software before the vehicle leaves the ground. What survives your test program could become a mission failure on orbit.

You will take flight hardware apart, with physical access being the beginning of the exercise rather than the end of it. Once you are on the board, we expect you to pivot to the software and go for root. Chain the bugs, escalate, persist, and prove out the full path an adversary would take. You will deliver the findings and the reproducible test plans that show our flight software and hardware engineers exactly where they stand, then work alongside them to close what you found.

This is an ideal role for someone who works at the intersection of hardware and software security, who would rather break a system than read about it being broken, and who wants that work to matter on a vehicle that cannot be recalled. It carries significant technical ownership and direct access to the engineers building the vehicles.

This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance.

Responsibilities

Own the capability

Advance True Anomaly's hardware security lab: tooling selection, bench design, budget case, and test methodology

Own the security test plan for spacecraft hardware, radios, and flight software, and the schedule it runs on

Hardware and radios

Perform invasive and non-invasive hardware attacks against flight hardware: side-channel analysis, fault injection (voltage, clock, EM), chip desoldering and rework, decapping, and exploitation of embedded debug and bus interfaces (JTAG, SWD, UART, SPI, I2C)

Extract and reverse engineer firmware across the architectures our hardware runs on

Analyze wired and wireless protocols, including RF links, proprietary protocols, and spacecraft command and telemetry paths

Software

Pivot from hardware access to software exploitation: identify memory corruption and logic flaws, chain them, and escalate toward full system control

Build coverage-guided and protocol fuzzing harnesses (AFL++, libFuzzer ) and emulation-based rigs (QEMU, Unicorn) to decouple testing from hardware availability

Root-cause findings and develop proof-of-concept exploits that demonstrate real impact and drive remediation priority

Assess post-exploitation impact and the effectiveness of isolation, key handling, and recovery mechanisms

Conduct security code review of flight software in C/C++ alongside binary analysis

Close the loop

Publish findings with reproducible test plans, retest after remediation, and build automated triage and coverage analysis to keep results legible at scale

Work with flight software and hardware engineers to implement fixes across memory safety, secure boot, cryptographic key management, and runtime hardening

Perform threat modeling and security architecture review accounting for a sophisticated adversary and a non-recoverable asset

Integrate security testing into HIL/SIL infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines, and support operational spacecraft with monitoring and incident response

Qualifications

Strong candidates tend to arrive from one of two directions: embedded systems engineers who moved into offensive security, or hardware and firmware security researchers who can write and review production C/C++. Real depth on both sides is rare and we are not expecting it on day one. Tell us which side you come from.

A good candidate will have:

5+ years of hands-on experience across embedded systems security, hardware security, or offensive security against firmware and embedded targets

Hands-on offensive hardware experience on real boards, including side-channel analysis, voltage or clock glitching, electromagnetic fault injection, chip desoldering and rework, and decapping

Practical experience attacking embedded debug and bus interfaces (JTAG, SWD, UART, SPI, I2C), including sniffing, injection, and firmware extraction

A track record of independently discovering, validating, and root-causing vulnerabilities in embedded systems, firmware, or hardware

Firmware reverse engineering across common embedded architectures, using tools such as Ghidra, IDA, or binwalk

Solid grounding in exploitation fundamentals on constrained targets: memory corruption, exploit primitives, the mitigations you will run into, and escalation toward full system control

Experience building your own tooling rather than only running off-the-shelf tools: coverage-guided or protocol fuzzing harnesses (AFL++, libFuzzer ), emulation-based rigs (QEMU, Unicorn), test fixtures, and bench instrumentation

Experience analyzing protocols, wired or wireless or proprietary, and reasoning about both design and implementation weaknesses

Strong C/C++ skills with deep understanding of memory safety and secure coding practices, sufficient to review flight software at the source level

Working understanding of hardware root of trust and secure boot, whether from implementing them or from breaking them

Proficiency with embedded toolchains, debuggers, static analysis tools, oscilloscopes, and logic analyzers, backed by strong debugging skills

Ability to obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance

An ideal candidate will also have:

An already-active TS/SCI security clearance

Experience using Ghommit tool.

Direct experience in spacecraft or satellite embedded software, or other aerospace safety-critical systems

Experience with RF and wireless security, or with software-defined radio (SDR)

Experience attacking or securing real-time and safety-critical systems, including timing constraints, deterministic execution, and interrupt handling

Experience implementing secure firmware update mechanisms and anti-tamper techniques

Experience implementing a hardware root of trust, secure boot, or key provisioning on a shipped product

Knowledge of hardware security modules (HSMs) and secure elements

Experience with HIL or SIL test infrastructure and embedded Linux build systems ( Yocto, NixOS )

Familiarity with space-specific protocols and standards (CCSDS, ECSS)

A public track record of impact: CVEs, published research,