# Software Engineer, HSM Infrastructure Security, Consumer Devices **Company:** [OpenAI](https://scaleengineer.com/companies/openai) OpenAI seeks a Security Software Engineer to design and implement hardware-backed security foundations across its consumer device ecosystem. This hands-on role focuses on developing security-critical software and firmware for HSMs, secure elements, and trusted execution environments, with emphasis on hardening the policy-to-HSM boundary that controls certificate issuance and cryptographic signing operations. The position requires 5+ years of secure embedded firmware development experience and deep proficiency in C, C++, or Rust, with strong applied cryptography and production systems engineering expertise. **Role:** Security Engineer **Seniority:** Senior **Locations:** San Francisco **Salary:** 347000–445000 USD [Apply](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/openai/a14780e7-0316-478c-8e6a-d7629c31c49d) Canonical: https://scaleengineer.com/jobs/openai/software-engineer-hsm-infrastructure-security-consumer-devices --- ## Responsibilities - Design and Implement Hardware Security Module Software: Architect and develop security-critical software and firmware for HSMs, secure elements, trusted execution environments, and hardware roots of trust. Work across the full stack of hardware-backed security mechanisms to implement cryptographically enforced key generation, provisioning, usage, rotation, recovery, and destruction policies that protect sensitive cryptographic material. - Harden Policy-to-HSM Trust Boundary: Build and strengthen the critical boundary layer between policy systems and HSMs that authorizes certificate issuance and cryptographic signing operations. Design controls that make trusted software and policy changes verifiable, auditable, and subject to multi-party authorization frameworks. Implement signing-policy enforcement mechanisms within hardware-backed trust boundaries. - Develop Cryptographic Interfaces and Protocols: Implement or extend cryptographic interfaces including PKCS#11, OpenSSL providers/engines, platform key-storage APIs, and hardware-security interfaces. Design and develop end-to-end cryptographic protocols spanning devices, secure hardware, policy services, and backend infrastructure to ensure secure key management and cryptographic operation. - Build HSM-Backed Infrastructure Systems: Design and implement HSM-backed certificate authority, code-signing, key-management, and device-identity systems. Develop device-provisioning and attestation capabilities supporting secure boot, factory provisioning, user registration, and authentication across OpenAI's consumer device ecosystem. - Develop Secure Firmware Components: Create HSM trusted applications, firmware services, device drivers, SDKs, and cryptographic service integrations. Write, review, test, and audit secure embedded software optimized for resource-constrained environments with attention to concurrency, memory safety, privilege separation, and hardware interfaces. - Create Security Testing and Validation Tools: Develop test harnesses, emulators, fuzzers, and fault-injection tooling to validate security properties and failure behaviors. Perform threat modeling of hardware and software trust boundaries and translate findings into concrete engineering improvements. Build frameworks for vulnerability discovery and security assurance. - Cross-Functional Security Integration: Partner with hardware, firmware, infrastructure, application, and security teams to integrate secure-by-default capabilities into production systems. Collaborate across organizational boundaries to ensure secure hardware-software co-design principles are embedded throughout device development and deployment. - Establish Security Engineering Standards: Help define and implement engineering standards for HSM development, applied cryptography, secure key management, and certificate infrastructure. Document best practices, threat models, and architectural patterns to guide the organization's security infrastructure development as the device ecosystem scales. ## Requirements ### education - {"name":"Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Related Field","description":"Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience demonstrating deep systems engineering and security expertise."} ### technical - {"name":"Secure Embedded Firmware Development","description":"5+ years of hands-on experience building secure embedded firmware for constrained environments. Deep understanding of embedded systems architecture, memory management, real-time constraints, and embedded operating systems with focus on security hardening and attack surface reduction."} - {"name":"Hardware Security Module (HSM) Development","description":"Proven hands-on experience developing security-critical software or firmware within, or directly adjacent to, an HSM, secure element, trusted execution environment (TEE), or hardware root of trust. Familiarity with HSM trusted applications, firmware services, or cryptographic mechanisms with demonstrated ability to work across hardware-software boundaries."} - {"name":"Applied Cryptography and Key Management","description":"Strong knowledge of applied cryptography, digital signatures, key hierarchies, secure key management, and cryptographic protocol design. Understanding of PKI, X.509 certificates, certificate authorities, certificate issuance, lifecycle protocols, and cryptographic algorithm implementation considerations."} - {"name":"Production Systems Engineering","description":"Demonstrated track record of designing, implementing, debugging, and shipping production systems software. Experience carrying projects from initial requirements through deployment with attention to reliability, security, performance, and maintainability in high-assurance environments."} - {"name":"Cryptographic Interfaces and Standards","description":"Experience implementing PKCS#11 providers, mechanisms, integrations, or working with cryptographic standards. Familiarity with OpenSSL providers/engines, platform key-storage APIs, secure-element APIs, or comparable hardware-security interfaces."} - {"name":"Security Architecture and Threat Modeling","description":"Ability to reason about concurrency, memory safety, privilege separation, hardware interfaces, failure modes, and side-channel or physical attack considerations. Capability to evaluate security designs and personally implement the software required to realize them."} ### experience - {"name":"Minimum 5 Years Secure Embedded Systems","description":"5+ years professional experience building security-critical embedded firmware for resource-constrained environments with demonstrated impact on production systems."} - {"name":"HSM or Secure Hardware Experience","description":"Hands-on experience with HSM firmware, secure elements, TEEs, or similar trusted hardware execution contexts. Familiarity with commercial HSM platforms such as Thales Luna, Entrust nShield, Utimaco, or AWS CloudHSM is advantageous."} - {"name":"Device Manufacturing and Provisioning","description":"Experience with device manufacturing, secure provisioning, factory restore, silicon bring-up, secure boot development, firmware-signing, or authenticated-update mechanisms is highly valuable for this role."} - {"name":"High-Assurance Security Software","description":"Experience sustaining high-assurance security software in production with focus on security incident response, vulnerability management, and continuous security improvement."} ## Skills ### required - {"name":"C Programming","description":"Deep proficiency in C for embedded systems, including memory management, pointer manipulation, low-level hardware interaction, and performance-critical code."} - {"name":"C++ Programming","description":"Strong C++ experience for systems programming, with understanding of object-oriented design patterns, resource management, and efficient runtime performance."} - {"name":"Rust Programming","description":"Demonstrated ability in Rust for systems programming with focus on memory safety, concurrency patterns, and secure coding practices in embedded or systems contexts."} - {"name":"Firmware Development","description":"Hands-on firmware development experience including bootloaders, HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layers), interrupt handling, and direct hardware register manipulation."} - {"name":"Cryptographic Implementation","description":"Understanding of cryptographic algorithm implementation, library integration (OpenSSL, libsodium, mbedTLS), and practical application of cryptographic primitives in embedded systems."} - {"name":"Security Protocol Design","description":"Ability to design, implement, and review cryptographic protocols with attention to threat models, attack vectors, and protocol-level security properties."} - {"name":"Systems-Level Debugging","description":"Proficiency with debuggers, hardware debugging interfaces (JTAG, SWD), emulation tools, and systematic troubleshooting across hardware-software boundaries."} ### preferred - {"name":"ARM TrustZone Development","description":"Experience developing for ARM TrustZone or other trusted execution environments with understanding of secure world and normal world interactions."} - {"name":"PKCS#11 Implementation","description":"Hands-on experience implementing PKCS#11 providers, mechanisms, or integrations for cryptographic operations and key management."} - {"name":"Secure Boot and Attestation","description":"Experience with secure boot mechanisms, measured boot, remote attestation, device identity, or hardware-backed storage systems."} - {"name":"Commercial HSM Platforms","description":"Familiarity with Thales Luna, Entrust nShield, Utimaco, Marvell LiquidSecurity, AWS CloudHSM, or comparable commercial or cloud-based HSM systems."} - {"name":"Multi-Party Authorization","description":"Experience implementing multi-party authorization, quorum-controlled deployments, tamper-resistant audit mechanisms, or attestable policy systems."} - {"name":"Hardware Acceleration and Custom Silicon","description":"Experience with hardware/software co-design involving cryptographic accelerators, secure processors, custom silicon, or security-related hardware development."} - {"name":"OpenSSL and Cryptographic Interfaces","description":"Practical experience with OpenSSL providers, engines, or custom cryptographic service integrations in production environments."} - {"name":"Vulnerability Analysis and Fuzzing","description":"Experience developing fuzzers, building test harnesses, performing fault injection, or conducting vulnerability assessments on security-critical code."} - {"name":"PKI and Certificate Management","description":"Deep understanding of PKI infrastructure, X.509 certificate standards, certificate lifecycle management, and CA operations."} ## Tech stack ### tools - {"name":"GDB and LLDB Debuggers","description":"Debugging tools for firmware and embedded systems development with hardware breakpoint support."} - {"name":"JTAG and SWD Debugging","description":"Hardware debugging interfaces for accessing embedded systems and HSM firmware during development and troubleshooting."} - {"name":"Emulation and Simulation Platforms","description":"QEMU, vendor-specific emulators, or custom simulation frameworks for HSM firmware development and testing."} - {"name":"Cryptographic Testing Tools","description":"OpenSSL, NIST tools, and cryptographic validation frameworks for testing cryptographic implementations and protocols."} - {"name":"Git and Version Control","description":"Distributed version control systems for managing firmware and embedded systems source code in collaborative environments."} - {"name":"Build Systems","description":"CMake, Make, Bazel, or similar build systems for compiling embedded firmware and cross-platform HSM software components."} - {"name":"Hardware Description Languages","description":"Verilog or VHDL experience beneficial for understanding custom silicon and hardware-software co-design aspects of HSM development."} ### others - {"name":"Threat Modeling Methodologies","description":"STRIDE, PASTA, or similar frameworks for identifying and mitigating security threats in hardware-software trust boundaries."} - {"name":"Security Code Review","description":"Expertise in reviewing and auditing security-critical code, identifying vulnerabilities, and implementing remediation strategies."} - {"name":"Cryptographic Protocol Design","description":"Formal methods, security proofs, and practical protocol design for authentication, key agreement, and secure communication."} - {"name":"Hardware-Software Co-Design","description":"Experience coordinating between hardware development, firmware implementation, and software integration teams for secure systems."} - {"name":"Physical Security Considerations","description":"Understanding of side-channel attacks, fault injection, and physical attack vectors against cryptographic implementations and hardware security modules."} - {"name":"Standards and Compliance","description":"Knowledge of security standards (FIPS, Common Criteria, NIST guidelines) relevant to cryptographic systems and HSM development."} ### databases - {"name":"Secure Key Storage","description":"Hardware-protected cryptographic key storage systems and key management databases integrated with HSM infrastructure."} ### languages - {"name":"C","description":"Primary language for embedded firmware and systems programming across HSM and secure hardware contexts."} - {"name":"C++","description":"Used for systems-level applications, SDK development, and host-side cryptographic service implementations."} - {"name":"Rust","description":"Modern systems programming language increasingly used for secure embedded systems with memory safety guarantees and performance characteristics."} - {"name":"Assembly","description":"ARM or x86 assembly for low-level hardware interaction, performance-critical operations, and processor-specific security features."} ### frameworks - {"name":"ARM TrustZone","description":"Trusted execution environment framework for ARM processors used in device security architecture and secure application development."} - {"name":"OpenSSL","description":"Cryptographic library for implementing SSL/TLS, digital signatures, key management, and X.509 certificate handling in HSM integrations."} - {"name":"PKCS#11","description":"Standard cryptographic interface for accessing hardware security modules and managing cryptographic operations through a unified API."} - {"name":"Embedded Operating Systems","description":"Real-time operating systems (RTOS), embedded Linux, or proprietary embedded OSes used in resource-constrained HSM and secure element environments."} ## Benefits ### benefits ## Compensation - **max:** 0 - **min:** 0 - **currency:** - **stockOptions:** false ## Interview process ### steps ## Full description We are hiring a Security Software Engineer to design and implement the hardware-backed security foundations used across OpenAI’s device ecosystem. A central focus of this role is hardening the boundary between our policy systems and the HSMs that protect sensitive cryptographic keys. This boundary determines which operations may be performed, what may be signed, which policies must be satisfied, and how changes to trusted software and policy are authorized. You will develop security-critical software and firmware within, or immediately adjacent to, an HSM trust boundary. Depending on your background, this may include HSM trusted applications, firmware services, cryptographic mechanisms, device drivers, PKCS#11 components, secure-provisioning protocols, or signing-policy enforcement systems. This is a hands-on software-engineering role. You will be expected to design systems, write and review production code, debug across hardware and software boundaries, and carry projects from initial requirements through deployment. It is not an HSM administration, PKI operations, compliance, or architecture-only position. **In This Role, You Will** * Design and implement security-critical software and firmware for HSMs, secure elements, trusted execution environments, and hardware roots of trust. * Build and harden the policy-to-HSM boundary responsible for authorizing certificate issuance and cryptographic signing operations. * Develop HSM trusted applications, firmware components, host interfaces, device drivers, SDKs, or cryptographic service integrations. * Implement or extend cryptographic interfaces such as PKCS#11, OpenSSL providers or engines, platform key-storage APIs, or comparable hardware-security interfaces. * Build firmware and software that cryptographically enforces key generation, provisioning, usage, rotation, recovery, and destruction policies. * Design and implement HSM-backed certificate authority, code-signing, key-management, and device-identity systems. * Develop end-to-end cryptographic protocols spanning devices, secure hardware, policy services, and backend infrastructure. * Build security capabilities supporting device attestation, secure boot, factory provisioning and restoration, user registration, and authentication. * Design controls that make trusted software and policy changes verifiable, auditable, and subject to appropriate multi-party authorization. * Write, review, test, and audit secure embedded software for resource-constrained environments. * Develop test harnesses, emulators, fuzzers, and fault-injection tooling to validate security properties and failure behavior. * Threat-model hardware and software trust boundaries and translate findings into concrete engineering improvements. * Partner with hardware, firmware, infrastructure, application, and security teams to integrate secure-by-default capabilities into production systems. * Help establish engineering standards for HSM development, applied cryptography, secure key management, and certificate infrastructure. **Minimum Qualifications** * 5+ years experience building secure embedded firmware for constrained environments * Deep programming experience in C, C++, or Rust. **You Might Thrive in This Role If You Have** * A strong track record of designing, implementing, debugging, and shipping production systems software. * Hands-on experience developing security-critical software or firmware within, or directly adjacent to, an HSM, secure element, TEE, or hardware root of trust. * Experience developing one or more of the following: * HSM firmware or trusted applications * Cryptographic mechanisms or hardware-accelerated cryptographic services * HSM device drivers, host libraries, SDKs, or middleware * PKCS#11 providers, mechanisms, or integrations * Secure key-provisioning or key-injection protocols * HSM-backed certificate authority or code-signing systems * Signing-policy enforcement within a hardware-backed trust boundary * Strong knowledge of applied cryptography, digital signatures, key hierarchies, secure key management, and cryptographic protocol design. * Experience with PKI, X.509 certificates, certificate authorities, certificate issuance, and certificate lifecycle protocols. * Familiarity with secure boot, measured boot, device identity, remote attestation, or hardware-backed storage. * Experience reasoning about concurrency, memory safety, privilege separation, hardware interfaces, failure modes, and side-channel or physical attack considerations. * The ability to evaluate security designs and personally implement the software required to realize them. * Clear communication skills and the ability to collaborate across hardware, firmware, backend, and product teams. **Additional Experience That May Be Helpful** * Firmware development for ARM TrustZone or another trusted execution environment. * Experience with commercial or cloud HSM platforms such as Thales Luna, Entrust/nShield, Utimaco, Marvell LiquidSecurity, AWS CloudHSM, or comparable systems. * Experience with PKCS#11, KMIP, OpenSSL providers or engines, secure-element APIs, or platform-native key-storage frameworks. * Device manufacturing, secure provisioning, factory restore, or silicon bring-up experience. * Secure boot ROM, bootloader, firmware-signing, anti-rollback, or authenticated-update development. * Developing trusted applications or cryptographic services inside an HSM or secure coprocessor. * Hardware/software co-design involving cryptographic accelerators, secure processors, or custom silicon. * Multi-party authorization, quorum-controlled deployments, tamper-resistant audit mechanisms, or attestable policy systems. * Secure or private storage systems based on hardware-protected keys. * Experience sustaining high-assurance security software in production. **About OpenAI** OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity. We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic. For additional information, please see [OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement](https://cdn.openai.com/policies/eeo-policy-statement.pdf). 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