{"id":2002918,"url":"https://alion.io/job/senior-software-engineer-2","title":"Senior Software Engineer","company":{"id":191,"name":"Technology Innovation Institute","domain":"tii.ae","url":"https://alion.io/company/technology-innovation-institute","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Phenom","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["United Arab Emirates"],"countries":["AE"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":43000,"max_usd":125000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":6426},"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"Anomaly Detection","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"Embedded C","optional":false},{"name":"FreeRTOS","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"RTOS","optional":false},{"name":"Threat Modeling","optional":false},{"name":"C","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"Git","optional":true},{"name":"MAVLink","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-29T00:00:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-08-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-13T03:04:35Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":45,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":45},"description":"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.\nRole Overview\nAs 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.\nThis 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.\nIndustry / Domain\nDefense & Aerospace / Embedded Security / Hardware Tamper Protection\nFunctional Activities\nEmbedded Security Firmware Development:\nDevelop 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.\nImplement secure boot chains (e.g., MCUboot), signed firmware images, and secure update mechanisms ensuring only authentic, unmodified code can run.\nImplement cryptographic key management on-device: provisioning, storage in hardware-protected domains, and reliable key/sensitive-data zeroization on confirmed tamper events.\nDevelop tamper-response logic: event latching, tamper-evident logging, anti-rollback, secure debug control, and lifecycle-state enforcement. \nSensor Acquisition & Signal Processing:\nDesign and implement sensor acquisition pipelines: ADC interfacing, sampling strategies, and driver development for analog and digital sensor front-ends.\nApply DSP techniques, including digital filtering, spectral analysis, and feature extraction, to characterize sensor signals in noisy real-world environments.\nDevelop 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.\nSupport data-collection campaigns and analysis workflows used to validate and improve detection performance. \nPlatform & System Integration:\nPerform 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).\nIntegrate tamper-protection firmware with host systems over standard interfaces (UART, SPI, I2C, CAN, network), including alert reporting, status telemetry, and command/control flows.\nWork with hardware, FPGA, security, and systems teams to validate end-to-end integration from sensor front-end to host-level response. \nSecurity Engineering & Compliance:\nContribute to threat modeling, vulnerability assessments, and secure-coding reviews for embedded targets.\nProduce design and implementation evidence supporting certification against hardware-security standards (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria).\nSupport production security workflows: fuse burning, root-of-trust provisioning, device identity, factory flashing, and manufacturing test procedures. \nQuality & Collaboration:\nDeliver well-tested firmware through CI/CD pipelines with automated unit, integration, and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing.\nParticipate actively in code reviews, design reviews, estimation, and agile ceremonies; mentor junior engineers within your areas of expertise.\nDocument designs, interfaces, and test procedures to team standards.\nNecessary Knowledge and Experience\n5-8 years of professional embedded software development experience, with firmware shipped through integration, test, and production, preferably in defense, aerospace, or security-critical products.\nStrong C/C++ on ARM Cortex-M class microcontrollers; solid grasp of real-time constraints, interrupt-driven design, and memory-constrained development.\nHands-on experience with Zephyr RTOS or a comparable RTOS (FreeRTOS, ThreadX) and willingness to specialize in Zephyr.\nDemonstrable 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.\nExperience 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.\nSoC 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.\nLow-power design experience: sleep-state management, power budgeting, and battery-backed always-on operation.\nFamiliarity with secure development practices: threat modeling, secure coding standards, and vulnerability assessment for embedded targets.\nProficiency with Git, CI/CD, automated testing, and HIL test setups; Docker familiarity is a plus.\nStrong English communication skills and proven ability to work with hardware, security, manufacturing, QA, and systems teams under pressure. \nEducation and Certification Requirements\nBSc or MSc in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Embedded Systems, or a related discipline.\nExposure to cryptographic-module or product security certification work (ISO/IEC 19790, FIPS 140, Common Criteria, or IEC 62443) is a strong plus.\nBasic understanding of flight-controller platforms (e.g., PX4/MAVLink) is a nice-to-have, not a requirement.\nContributions to open-source embedded or security projects (e.g., Zephyr, MCUboot) are valued. \nAt 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.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6887,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"Upper-Intermediate (B2)","optional":false}]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Arab Emirates","iso":"AE","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Quantum Science & Computing","Foundation Models","AI Research Labs","Research Institutes"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-07T12:19:59Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":47,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.846,"p_room":0.55,"age_days":44,"expected_fill_days":44,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:tail"],"computed_at":"2026-10-12T06:55:09Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/senior-software-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/senior-software-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-13T03:12:21Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4910,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-14T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":191},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=191"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fsenior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fsenior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fsenior-software-engineer-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/senior-software-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fsenior-software-engineer-2"}]}