Embedded Linux Security Engineer

<div class="content-intro"><p>We’re ALTEN Technology USA, an engineering company helping clients bring groundbreaking ideas to life—from advancing space exploration and life-saving medical devices to building autonomous electric vehicles. With 3,000+ experts across North America, we partner with leading companies in aerospace, medical devices, robotics, automotive, commercial vehicles, EVs, rail, and more.</p> <p>As part of the global ALTEN Group—57,000+ engineers in 30 countries—we deliver across the entire product development cycle, from consulting to full project outsourcing.</p> <p>When you join ALTEN Technology USA, you’ll collaborate on some of the world’s toughest engineering challenges, supported by mentorship, career growth opportunities, and comprehensive benefits. We take pride in fostering a culture where employees feel valued, supported, and inspired to grow.</p></div><p><strong>Workplace:</strong> On-Site, 5 days <br><strong>Location:</strong> Foster City, CA<br><strong>Salary:</strong> $150-160k</p> <p>We are looking for an Embedded Linux Security Engineer to implement security solution to harden our next-generation embedded Linux platform. In this role, you will bridge the gap between low-level hardware security, kernel hardening, and secure user-space application containment. You will not only design cryptographic defense mechanisms but will also automate security pipelines in CI/CD and partner directly with manufacturing teams to ensure devices are provisioned securely and reliably at scale without production risks.</p> <p><strong>Responsibilities </strong><br>    • Platform Hardening & Architecture: Design and implement the Hardware Root of Trust and Secure Boot architecture from the first-stage bootloader through the Linux kernel.<br>    • Storage & Integrity Management: Implement dm-verity for cryptographically verified read-only root filesystems and secure data encryption at rest.<br>    • Trusted Execution Environments: Develop, integrate, and maintain a TEE (e.g., OP-TEE) and author Secure/Trusted Applications (TAs).<br>    • Application Sandboxing: Enforce strict user-space isolation and sandboxing strategies using SELinux, AppArmor, cgroups, namespaces, and seccomp filters to protect core systems from untrusted applications.<br>    • DevSecOps Automation: Build automated cryptographic signing pipelines within CI/CD infrastructure (e.g., GitLab CI, GitHub Actions) to securely sign bootloaders, kernels, and OTA payloads using HSMs or secure key vaults.<br>    • Production Provisioning Support: Collaborate with manufacturing teams to write robust scripts and tools for burning permanent hardware configuration fuses (eFuses / OTP memory) securely, designing end-of-line (EOL) test software to validate security features before shipping.<br>    • System Resilience: Architect multi-slot boot recovery layouts (e.g., A/B partitioning) to guarantee fail-safe resilience against failed OTA updates or corrupted boots.</p> <p><strong>Required Qualifications </strong><br>    • Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).<br>    • Core Experience: 6+ years of professional experience in Embedded Linux development, board bring-up, and Board Support Package (BSP) customization.<br>    • Security Focus: 3+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience deploying device-level security features into physical production hardware.<br>    • Low-Level Systems: Expert knowledge of bootloader configurations (e.g., U-Boot Verified Boot, Barebox) and customizing the Linux kernel storage/security subsystem (dm-crypt, dm-verity).<br>    • Hardware Security Architecture: Deep understanding of modern processor security architectures, specifically ARM TrustZone (ARMv7-A / ARMv8-A, Exception Levels EL1–EL3).<br>    • Sandboxing & Access Controls: Proven track record implementing SELinux/AppArmor policies and utilizing standard Linux containment tools (cgroups, namespaces).<br>    • Build Automation: Proficiency with embedded Linux build automated frameworks like the Yocto Project (BitBake recipe design) or Buildroot.<br>    • Programming: Advanced proficiency in C and strong scripting skills in Python or Bash.</p> <p><strong>Preferred Qualifications </strong><br>    • Cryptography Expertise: Strong foundational knowledge of symmetric/asymmetric cryptography, hashing algorithms (SHA-256/384), public key infrastructure (PKI), and handling physical Hardware Security Modules (HSMs).<br>    • Manufacturing Scale: Prior experience working with Contract Manufacturers (CMs) or internal factory lines to deploy secure key-injection and fuse-burning protocols.<br>    • Advanced Sandboxing: Experience with embedded container runtimes (e.g., LXC, crun) or lightweight sandboxing frameworks tailored for resource-constrained architectures.<br>    • Anti-Rollback Protection: Experience designing secure versioning and hardware-enforced anti-rollback strategies for OTA updates.</p> <p><strong>Salary Range</strong><br>    • $150,000 - 160,000<br>    • The actual salary offered is dependent on various factors including, but not limited to, location, the candidate’s combination of job-related knowledge, qualifications, skills, education, training, and experience </p><div class="content-conclusion"><p>All qualified app