Platform Security Engineer, OpenBMC

Details

Anthropic is building a founding team responsible for the server management firmware deployed across its server fleet. The role covers production firmware and manageability features from board bring-up through production, as well as hardening firmware against sophisticated adversaries. Security is a first-class constraint, including secure boot, signing, and attestation in partnership with firmware security and hardware engineers.

Responsibilities

Production and Manageability

• Design, build, and ship OpenBMC firmware and manageability features for x86 and Arm platforms, including GPU platforms, using Yocto/OpenEmbedded.
• Build the management stack on DMTF and OCP standards, including MCTP, PLDM, SPDM, Redfish, and RDE, as well as IPMI/KCS.
• Implement sensors, telemetry, inventory, logging, and reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) capabilities.
• Build BMC-to-BIOS/host communications using eSPI/LPC.
• Implement thermal, fan, and power management using PMBus.
• Work across the hardware and firmware boundary with I2C/I3C, SPI, PCIe, SMBus, device trees, U-Boot, and Linux.

Security and Hardening

• Own the BMC security posture, including secure and measured boot, root of trust, attestation using SPDM, authenticated updates using PLDM Firmware Update, rollback protection, and attack-surface reduction.
• Lead threat modeling and secure design reviews.
• Run coordinated vulnerability disclosure with vendors and the upstream community.
• Build verification tooling, including static analysis, fuzzing, firmware extraction, and CI gating.

Requirements

• Strong technical cross-functional leadership skills and the ability to set direction.
• Hands-on OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience on x86 and/or Arm platforms, from bring-up through production, including hands-on experience with D-Bus/sdbusplus.
• Strong C/C++ and Python skills.
• Deep Linux user-space and kernel fundamentals.
• Proficiency with Yocto/OpenEmbedded.
• A security mindset applied to firmware development.
• Upstream contributions to OpenBMC, U-Boot, DMTF, or OCP.
• Working knowledge of out-of-band and in-band management, relevant DMTF specifications, and the device interfaces they use.
• Strong debugging skills and a track record of shipping reliable, well-tested code.
• Clear communication across internal teams and external vendors.
• Ability to work effectively across hardware and software boundaries.
• Knowledge of NIST firmware security guidelines and hardware security frameworks, specifically SP 800-193 and SP 800-147/155.
• Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience. The field of study should be relevant to the role through coursework, training, or professional experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in systems security, including at least 5 years focused on firmware and hardware security involving firmware, bootloaders, and OS-level security.
• Experience with hardware roots of trust and attestation, including Caliptra, OCP S.A.F.E., TPM/HRoT, and SPDM.
• Experience writing memory-safe systems code in Rust or Zig.
• Firmware vulnerability research, reverse engineering, or fuzzing experience.
• Previous work with AI/ML infrastructure security.

Compensation

• Annual salary: $320,000–$405,000 USD.

Work Arrangement and Logistics

• Locations: San Francisco, California; New York City, New York; and Seattle, Washington.
• Hybrid policy: Staff are expected to work from one of the offices at least 25% of the time, although some roles may require more office time.
• Anthropic explicitly states that it sponsors visas and will make every reasonable effort to assist with visa sponsorship when an offer is made.
• Anthropic offers competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and office collaboration space.