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Title: Software Design Engineer 4

Location: Redmond, WA (3 days - Hybrid)

Summary:

• Build and advance a next-generation firmware security analysis platform within Azure Hardware Security.
• This system combines large language models (LLMs), compiler technology, and automated fuzzing to identify security vulnerabilities in firmware at scale, significantly reducing the effort required for manual security assessments.
• The project addresses a critical industry challenge: much of today's firmware is developed by third parties and has not historically been analyzed with the same rigor as first-party software.
• By automating key aspects of firmware security review, this platform enables repeatable, scalable analysis that improves overall security posture while supporting a broader ecosystem of hardware and firmware providers.
• As a member of the engineering team, you will work directly with security researchers, compiler engineers, and platform developers to build production-quality tooling spanning LLVM, fuzzing infrastructure, static analysis, AI-assisted automation, and open-source engineering practices.

Responsibilities:

Build and Enhance Security Analysis Pipelines

• Develop preprocessing pipelines that compile C/C++ firmware code into LLVM Intermediate Representation (IR).
• Implement and maintain LLVM-based transformations to make firmware suitable for off-target analysis and fuzzing.
• Create and improve code-analysis workflows, including call-graph extraction, metadata generation, and static-analysis integrations.
• Design and maintain systems that generate and execute fuzzing campaigns using modern fuzzing frameworks and AI-assisted techniques.
• Improve crash triage systems that automatically identify, deduplicate, and analyze security findings.
• Develop automated mechanisms to classify code semantics and improve analysis accuracy.

Security Automation and Tooling

• Build scalable automation that combines compiler infrastructure, security tooling, and AI-driven workflows.
• Enhance vulnerability detection pipelines and help reduce false positives through improved analysis techniques.
• Improve reporting systems that transform raw security findings into actionable engineering insights.
• Validate analysis approaches across multiple firmware targets and environments.

Open-Source Readiness

• Improve system reliability, modularity, test coverage, and CI/CD automation.
• Create developer documentation, onboarding guides, and architectural references.
• Support dependency review, reproducible builds, and general open-source readiness activities.
• Help establish contribution workflows, issue triage practices, and release processes for external contributors.

Engineering Excellence

• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code.
• Participate in design reviews and technical architecture discussions.
• Collaborate closely with engineers across security, hardware, and platform teams.
• Contribute to long-term technical strategy and platform evolution.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong professional experience developing software in C/C++.
• Hands-on experience with compiler technologies, LLVM, or low-level systems programming.
• Experience working with fuzzing frameworks such as libFuzzer, AFL, AFL++, or similar technologies.
• Strong understanding of software security principles, including memory-safety vulnerabilities and root-cause analysis.
• Proficiency with Python for automation and tooling development.
• Experience using Git-based development workflows.
• Demonstrated ability to write well-tested, maintainable, and documented production code.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with firmware, embedded systems, device software, or bare-metal development.
• Knowledge of hardware abstraction layers (HALs), MMIO, emulation, rehosting, or cross-compilation techniques.
• Experience with static-analysis platforms such as CodeQL.
• Familiarity with program-analysis concepts such as call graphs, data-flow analysis, or IR transformations.
• Experience integrating AI, machine learning, or LLM technologies into engineering workflows.
• Previous open-source contributor or maintainer experience.
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines and release automation.
• Familiarity with Azure DevOps, GitHub, or similar development platforms.

Explain a typical day in the role:

• A typical day on Project Talonera involves building and improving AI-driven firmware security analysis pipelines that automatically discover vulnerabilities in third-party firmware. Engineers spend their time developing low-level tooling in C++, Python, and LLVM, transforming firmware source code into analyzable LLVM IR, creating compiler passes, generating and refining fuzzing harnesses, and improving automated vulnerability detection workflows.
• Daily work may include debugging firmware rehosting issues, investigating crashes discovered during fuzzing campaigns, reducing false positives in security findings, and enhancing LLM-based systems that classify firmware functionality and generate analysis artifacts.
• Team members collaborate closely with security researchers, compiler engineers, and project leadership to review architecture, prioritize new capabilities, and validate analysis results across diverse firmware targets.
• As Talonera moves toward open-source release, engineers also contribute to code quality improvements, CI/CD automation, testing, documentation, dependency reviews, developer onboarding experiences, and release-readiness activities, helping transform advanced security research into a production-grade platform that can be used and extended by the broader security community.

What is the ideal background of a candidate for this role?

• The ideal candidate for Project Talonera is a systems software engineer with a strong security mindset who enjoys working at the intersection of compiler technology, firmware analysis, fuzzing, and AI-assisted automation.
• They likely have several years of professional experience developing low-level software in C/C++, are comfortable working directly with LLVM and LLVM IR, and have hands-on experience building or modifying compiler passes, analysis tools, or developer tooling.

The strongest candidates will come from backgrounds such as:

• Compiler and Program Analysis Engineering – experience with LLVM, code transformation, static analysis, CodeQL, call-graph analysis, dataflow analysis, or language tooling.
• Security Engineering and Research – experience with fuzzing (libFuzzer, AFL/AFL++), vulnerability discovery, crash triage, exploit mitigation, sanitizer technologies (ASan, UBSan, MSan), and root-cause analysis.
• Firmware or Embedded Systems Development – familiarity with firmware architectures, hardware abstraction layers (HALs), MMIO interfaces, cross-compilation, bare-metal systems, or rehosting techniques.
• Developer Platform and Tooling Engineering – experience building scalable automation pipelines, CI/CD systems, code-generation tools, testing frameworks, and production-quality open-source software.
• In short: Talonera is ideal for candidates who want to work on cutting-edge security challenges, leverage modern AI techniques, contribute to open source, and build technology that has meaningful impact on the security of hardware and firmware ecosystems at scale.

Top 3 Must-Have HARD Skills & years of experience for each:

• LLVM / Compiler Engineering – 5+ years
• C/C++ Systems Programming – 7+ years
• Security Fuzzing & Vulnerability Research – 3–5+ years

Thanks

Salary Range:$1,70,000 - $1,80,000 Annually -Factors that may affect pay within this range may include geography/market, skills, education, experience, and other qualifications of the successful candidate.

Benefits:The Company offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements: [medical insurance] [dental insurance] [vision insurance] [401(k) retirement plan] [long-term disability insurance [short-term disability insurance] [5 personal days accrued each calendar year. The Paid time off benefits meet the paid sick and safe time laws that pertain to the City/ State] [10-15 days of paid vacation time] [6 paid holidays and 1 floating holiday per calendar year]

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