Platform Security Engineering - Openbmc

Anthropic Anthropic · AI Frontier · San Francisco, CA · Security

This role focuses on engineering and securing OpenBMC-based management firmware for Anthropic's server fleet. It involves designing, building, and shipping firmware features, implementing management stacks based on industry standards, and hardening the firmware against sophisticated adversaries through secure boot, root of trust, and attestation mechanisms. The role also includes leading threat modeling, secure design reviews, and building verification tooling.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design, build, and ship OpenBMC firmware and manageability features for x86 and Arm (including GPU) platforms, from bring-up through production, using Yocto/OpenEmbedded
  2. Build the management stack on DMTF/OCP standards (MCTP, PLDM, SPDM, Redfish, RDE) and IPMI/KCS: sensors, telemetry, inventory, logging, RAS
  3. Implement BMC-to-BIOS/host communications, eSPI/LPC, thermal/fan/power management (PMBus)
  4. Work the hardware/firmware boundary: I2C/I3C, SPI, PCIe, SMBus, device trees, U-Boot, Linux
  5. Own the BMC security posture: secure and measured boot, root of trust, attestation (SPDM), authenticated update (PLDM FW Update), rollback protection, attack-surface reduction
  6. Lead threat modeling and secure design reviews; run coordinated vulnerability disclosure with vendors and the upstream community
  7. Build verification tooling: static analysis, fuzzing, firmware extraction, CI gating

Skills

Required

  • Systems security
  • Firmware security
  • Hardware security
  • OpenBMC/BMC firmware
  • x86 and Arm platforms
  • Yocto/OpenEmbedded
  • C/C++
  • Python
  • Linux kernel/user-space
  • D-Bus/sdbusplus
  • Secure boot
  • Root of trust
  • Attestation (SPDM)
  • Authenticated update (PLDM FW Update)
  • Rollback protection
  • Attack-surface reduction
  • Threat modeling
  • Secure design reviews
  • Vulnerability disclosure
  • Static analysis
  • Fuzzing
  • Firmware extraction
  • CI gating
  • DMTF/OCP standards (MCTP, PLDM, SPDM, Redfish, RDE)
  • IPMI/KCS
  • Sensors, telemetry, inventory, logging, RAS
  • BMC-to-BIOS/host communications
  • eSPI/LPC
  • Thermal/fan/power management (PMBus)
  • Hardware/firmware boundary interfaces (I2C/I3C, SPI, PCIe, SMBus)
  • Device trees
  • U-Boot
  • Linux
  • Debugging
  • Shipping reliable, well-tested code
  • Clear communication
  • Hardware and software boundary collaboration
  • NIST firmware security guidelines (SP 800-193, 800-147/155)

Nice to have

  • Hardware roots of trust and attestation (Caliptra, OCP S.A.F.E., TPM/HRoT, SPDM)
  • Memory-safe systems code in Rust or Zig
  • Firmware vulnerability research
  • Reverse-engineering
  • Fuzzing
  • AI/ML infrastructure security

What the JD emphasized

  • 8+ years of experience in systems security, with at least 5 years focused on firmware and hardware security
  • Hands-on OpenBMC/BMC firmware experience on x86 and/or Arm, from bring-up through production with hands-on D-Bus/sdbusplus
  • Strong C/C++ and Python, deep Linux user-space/kernel fundamentals, and Yocto/OpenEmbedded proficiency
  • A security mindset applied to firmware, not bolted on afterward
  • Upstream contributions to OpenBMC, U-Boot, DMTF, or OCP
  • Working knowledge of out-of-band and in-band management, the relevant DMTF specs, and the device interfaces they run over
  • Strong debugging and a track record of shipping reliable, well-tested code.