Secure Hardware System Engineer, Platform Architecture

Apple - Beaverton, OR

Full-time - Senior

Beaverton, OR

Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing

About the position

As a member of the Platform Architecture group at Apple, you will play a crucial role in connecting our hardware, software, and servers into a unified system. This team is dedicated to enhancing the security of Apple's products, which are trusted by millions for storing personal data. Your primary responsibility will be to develop threat models that define platform-level security requirements for new products, driving the adoption of security architectures that incorporate hardware, software, and server elements. This role is pivotal in ensuring that we continuously enhance the security of Apple products, thereby maintaining the trust of our customers. In this position, you will lead cross-functional teams throughout the product development cycle, addressing system-level issues while ensuring that product security is not compromised and that world-class product design is maintained. You will be tasked with developing threat models and associated security architectures for innovative Apple products and technologies. This includes deriving system security requirements and designing balanced and novel mitigations in collaboration with iconic product and engineering teams. Additionally, you will create detailed system-level specifications to guide product development, integration, and quality assurance teams. This will involve the creation of golden unit tests, reference data, and sample libraries to facilitate the integration of security technologies across team boundaries, such as client/server interactions. Collaboration will be key, as you will work with other security engineers, architects, and researchers across various Apple divisions, including software, hardware, silicon, server, and product groups. You will also drive security requirements and architecture into silicon provided by external vendors, using a wide range of interpersonal and technical skills to champion the adoption of industry-leading security technologies across multiple product categories. As the external landscape evolves, you will identify emerging threats, new attacks, and mitigation techniques to ensure that Apple remains at the forefront of security innovation.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-functional teams throughout the product development cycle to resolve system-level issues without sacrificing product security or impacting product design.
• Develop threat models and associated security architectures for new Apple products and technologies.
• Derive system security requirements and design mitigations in collaboration with product and engineering teams.
• Create detailed system-level specifications to guide product development and quality assurance teams.
• Develop golden unit tests, reference data, and sample libraries to aid integration of security technologies.
• Collaborate with security engineers, architects, and researchers across Apple on high-visibility projects.
• Drive security requirements and architecture into external vendor provided silicon.
• Champion the adoption of security technologies across multiple product categories.
• Identify emerging threats, new attacks, and mitigation techniques as the external landscape evolves.

Requirements

• Ability to effectively lead cross-functional initiatives.
• Initiative to provide architectural guidance to teams lacking resident security expertise.
• Breadth to work cross-functionally with various teams to resolve system-level security issues.
• Strong written and oral communication skills across multiple levels.
• Ability to critically analyze security properties of a system to build comprehensive threat models.
• Familiarity with common threat modeling methodologies such as STRIDE.
• Knowledge of basic cryptographic principles, including symmetric vs asymmetric crypto and encryption vs authentication.
• Familiarity with common programming languages and hardware block diagrams is a plus.
• BS degree and a minimum of 10 years relevant industry experience.