Technology Innovation Institute (TII) is a publicly funded research institute, based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It is home to a diverse community of leading scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and researchers from across the globe, transforming problems and roadblocks into pioneering research and technology prototypes that help move society ahead.
Role Overview
As an experienced Senior Software Engineer specializing in embedded security and real-time firmware, you will design, implement, and maintain the embedded software for a physical tamper-detection system detecting and responding to physical intrusion on PCBs. Working with low-power MCUs, you will build the sensing, boot-security, and tamper-response software that protects cryptographic material and mission integrity.
This position requires deep proficiency in embedded C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class devices, hands-on experience with Zephyr (or a comparable RTOS), and strong digital signal processing skills: the systems you build must reliably distinguish genuine tamper events from benign environmental noise and vibration. You will work as a senior individual contributor within a multidisciplinary team of hardware, security, manufacturing, and certification engineers, taking independent ownership of complex firmware subsystems and mentoring junior engineers.
Industry / Domain
Defense & Aerospace / Embedded Security / Hardware Tamper Protection
Functional Activities
Embedded Security Firmware Development:
- Develop and maintain real-time firmware in C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class MCUs under Zephyr RTOS, optimized for ultra-low-power, always-on operation in battery-backed power domains.
- Implement secure boot chains (e.g., MCUboot), signed firmware images, and secure update mechanisms ensuring only authentic, unmodified code can run.
- Implement cryptographic key management on-device: provisioning, storage in hardware-protected domains, and reliable key/sensitive-data zeroization on confirmed tamper events.
- Develop tamper-response logic: event latching, tamper-evident logging, anti-rollback, secure debug control, and lifecycle-state enforcement.
Sensor Acquisition & Signal Processing:
- Design and implement sensor acquisition pipelines: ADC interfacing, sampling strategies, and driver development for analog and digital sensor front-ends.
- Apply DSP techniques, including digital filtering, spectral analysis, and feature extraction, to characterize sensor signals in noisy real-world environments.
- Develop and tune event-detection and classification algorithms that separate genuine tamper signatures from environmental noise, vibration, and transient disturbances, minimizing false positives without missing real events.
- Support data-collection campaigns and analysis workflows used to validate and improve detection performance.
Platform & System Integration:
- Perform SoC/MCU platform bring-up on NXP-based and NVIDIA-based platforms: BSP integration, boot-chain validation, peripheral enablement, driver integration, and platform debugging (Linux/Yocto on host platforms where applicable).
- Integrate tamper-protection firmware with host systems over standard interfaces (UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, network), including alert reporting, status telemetry, and command/control flows.
- Work with hardware, FPGA, security, and systems teams to validate end-to-end integration from sensor front-end to host-level response.
Security Engineering & Compliance:
- Contribute to threat modeling, vulnerability assessments, and secure-coding reviews for embedded targets.
- Produce design and implementation evidence supporting certification against hardware-security standards (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria).
- Support production security workflows: fuse burning, root-of-trust provisioning, device identity, factory flashing, and manufacturing test procedures.
Quality & Collaboration:
- Deliver well-tested firmware through CI/CD pipelines with automated unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.
- Participate actively in code reviews, design reviews, estimation, and agile ceremonies; mentor junior engineers within your areas of expertise.
- Document designs, interfaces, and test procedures to team standards.
Necessary Knowledge and Experience
- 5-8 years of professional embedded software development experience, with firmware shipped through integration, test, and production, preferably in defense, aerospace, or security-critical products.
- Strong C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class microcontrollers; solid grasp of real-time constraints, interrupt-driven design, and memory-constrained development.
- Hands-on experience with Zephyr RTOS or a comparable RTOS (FreeRTOS, ThreadX) and willingness to specialize in Zephyr.
- Demonstrable DSP and sensor signal-processing experience (required): ADC interfacing, digital filtering, spectral analysis, feature extraction, and event/anomaly detection in noisy environments. Edge-ML classification experience is a plus.
- Experience implementing embedded security features: secure boot (MCUboot or equivalent), signed firmware and secure update, hardware root of trust, TEE concepts, key provisioning and zeroization, encrypted communications, anti-rollback, and secure debug control.
- SoC platform bring-up experience (NXP and/or NVIDIA platforms preferred): BSP integration, boot-chain validation, peripheral enablement, driver integration, and platform debugging; Linux/Yocto familiarity for host-side integration.
- Low-power design experience: sleep-state management, power budgeting, and battery-backed always-on operation.
- Familiarity with secure development practices: threat modeling, secure coding standards, and vulnerability assessment for embedded targets.
- Proficiency with Git, CI/CD, automated testing, and HIL test setups; Docker familiarity is a plus.
- Strong English communication skills and proven ability to work with hardware, security, manufacturing, QA, and systems teams under pressure.
Education and Certification Requirements
- BSc or MSc in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, or a related discipline.
- Exposure to cryptographic-module or product security certification work (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria, or IEC 62443) is a strong plus.
- Basic understanding of flight-controller platforms (e.g., PX4/MAVLink) is a nice-to-have, not a requirement.
- Contributions to open-source embedded or security projects (e.g., Zephyr, MCUboot) are valued.
At TII, we help society to overcome its biggest hurdles through a rigorous approach to scientific discovery and inquiry, using state-of-the-art facilities and collaboration with leading international institutions. Our rigorous discovery and inquiry-based approach helps to forge new and disruptive breakthroughs in advanced materials, autonomous robotics, cryptography, digital security, directed energy, quantum computing and secure systems.
