R&D Vulnerability Assessment Specialist; R&D Engineer

What You Will Do

The Technology Applications Group (A-3) is seeking a Vulnerability Assessment Expert to work on our nation's most pressing national security challenges. A-3 is home to a broad range of engineering and scientific expertise dedicated to delivering functional solutions for users across the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and Intelligence Community. A-3's core competencies include custom electronic solutions, radio frequency design and analysis, mechanical design and evaluation, power infrastructure and systems, and electromagnetics.

A-3 currently has an opening on the Electronic Solutions team for an individual interested in working with a multidisciplinary group consisting of engineers, scientists, technicians, and technologists working to transform concepts and designs into deployable products to meet Global Security mission deliverables.

The desired candidate's primary functions will be vulnerability assessments of electronics, reverse engineering and binary extraction from electronics, firmware development and reverse engineering, and network/bus protocol reverse engineering and data extraction.

The candidate will also be expected to help with other tasking within the Electronic Solutions team which will include electronics hardware development and analysis, documentation and proposal writing, and brainstorming solutions to sponsor needs.

The successful candidate will work both independently and as part of a team typically operating on short operational timescales. Most project work is conducted at the Q and SCI levels.

• The successful candidate will be required to lead, collaborate, and apply technical skills within a multidisciplinary operational environment.
• Demonstrated ability to lead components of advanced engineering research, both independently and on teams.
• Demonstrated ability to independently identify and develop new skills and become an expert in new areas as required by new projects.
• Demonstrated experience formulating work plans, identifying project resources, and executing R&D projects.
• Demonstrated expertise in participating in formal Vulnerability Assessments.
• Technical expertise in most of the following topic areas.
  • Electronic systems development, including analog and/or digital circuit design, schematic capture and layout, and experience with circuit simulation tools
  • Reverse engineering and vulnerability assessment of electronics hardware and firmware
  • Embedded system design, integration, firmware development, and characterization.
  • Bare metal programming for an array of microcontroller architectures in assembly and
    
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  • Tailoring Linux for embedded systems
  • Firmware reverse engineering tools like Ghidra and/or IDA Pro.
  • Network and bus protocol identification, reverse engineering, and data extraction.

Position requires a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or related STEM field from an accredited institution and 6+ years of related experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience directly related to the occupation.

• Proven leadership of a large multi-organizational program or project.
• Operational experience in any of the following topics:
  • Modeling and simulation for electronics and/or electro-mechanical systems
  • RTOS programming for embedded systems
  • Linux device driver programming
  • Die-level analysis, live-probing, and modification
  • Software-defined radio
  • Antenna design, especially miniaturized antenna structures and PCB antennas
  • Signal processing, including time and frequency domain analysis, filter design, and development of sampling strategies
  • RF and microwave systems design and analysis, including transmitter and receiver development, antenna selection, and RF PCB development
  • Applied electromagnetics, especially in pulsed power and high-power magnetics
  • Electromagnetics modeling and simulation in COMSOL, REMCOM, or similar
  • Field-programmable gate array (FPGA) devices, including experience with hardware description languages (Verilog, VHDL, or similar)
  • Cybersecurity tools and best practices
  • Electromechanical systems integration
  • Software engineering, UI/UX…