Senior FPGA Reverse Engineer

STR’s Cyber Division is hiring a Senior FPGA Reverse Engineer who will leverage their digital hardware design background to work within a multi-disciplinary team solving unique problems surrounding FPGA reverse engineering.

We are seeking a candidate to execute FPGA reverse engineering tasks and support software development to improve and automate the process. A key responsibility will be netlist analysis, which involves studying gate-level layouts of FPGA applications to craft a behavioral understanding of the design through a combination of logic circuit analysis and characterization through register transfer level (RTL) simulations. Candidates will also support efforts in operationalizing emerging hardware reverse engineering capabilities to better enable gate-level netlist analysis. Tool development involves writing software leveraging existing frameworks and insight based on the FPGA reverse engineering process to improve STR’s capability in this emerging field. A FPGA reverse engineer should be prepared to brief the internal team and STR’s customers on RE findings and provide updates on tool development.

What you will do:

• Perform FPGA reverse engineering work within a team to identify behavioral details of an application • Model, test, and document RE findings using hardware modeling and simulation platforms • Prepare reports and presentations for STR’s customers and collaborators detailing FPGA RE findings • Assist in research for emerging FPGA and hardware reverse engineering capabilities • Develop software supporting STR’s FPGA reverse engineering capabilities and identify new areas for tool development • Participate in design reviews and testing for FPGA RE tools

Who you are:

• This position requires the ability to obtain a Top Secret (TS) security clearance, for which U.S. citizenship is needed by the U.S. Government • Bachelors Degree in Computer Engineering/Electrical & Computer Engineering with at least 5 years of relevant experience • Strong problem solving skills and ability to apply a technical background to non-traditional problems • Experience working with hardware description languages (i.e., Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHDL) • Experience developing applications targeting FPGAs including design, synthesis, and configuration • In depth knowledge of industry standard FPGAs (i.e., Altera, Xilinx), their development environments (i.e., Quartus, Vivado), RTL simulation, and project compilation workflows • Strong background with digital design and logic concepts • Software development experience ideally in Python, C, and/or C++ • Ability to prepare and present technical material to customers and internal staff

Nice to have: