Software Design Engineer 4

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. 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

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; 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; 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; 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

Requirements

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

Nice to have

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

Benefits

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; 10-15 days of paid vacation time; 6 paid holidays and 1 floating holiday per calendar year