Senior​/Principal R&D Cybersecurity - Formal Verification Researcher, Onsite

About Sandia

Sandia National Laboratories is the nation's premier science and engineering lab for national security and technology innovation, with teams of specialists focused on cutting‑edge work in a broad array of areas. Some of the main reasons we love our jobs:

• Challenging work with amazing impact that contributes to security, peace, and freedom worldwide
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• Career advancement and enrichment opportunities
• Flexible work arrangements for many positions include 9/80 (work 80 hours every two weeks, with every other Friday off) and 4/10 (work 4 ten‑hour days each week) compressed workweeks, part‑time work, and telecommuting (a mix of onsite work and working from home)
• Generous vacation, strong medical and other benefits, competitive 401k, learning opportunities, relocation assistance and amenities aimed at creating a solid work/life balance*

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* These benefits vary by job classification.

We are seeking a Computer Science researcher (job title: R&D Cybersecurity) who is an expert in formal methods. This opening is for an experienced researcher who can demonstrate the necessary technical knowledge and skill base in formal methods and automated verification of hardware and software.

Our researchers are expected to conduct innovative research, publish and present results in referred journals and conferences, work in multidisciplinary teams, and seek out new and significant problems of national importance. Our Center is especially interested in candidates who can develop and apply formal methods research, including using automated or semi‑automated tools that can support the verification of hardware and embedded software systems.

Collaboration with multi-disciplinary teams is essential to successfully realizing these objectives.

Our department (Digital Foundations & Mathematics
1) develops and maintains capabilities for the formal verification of digital systems. The verification activities include analysis of hardware and software; modeling and simulation of digital or software systems; synthesis of hardware or software to meet formal specifications; and development of specialized software utilizing advanced mathematics to meet specialized customer needs. Our team consists mostly of researchers in computer science, analysis of programming languages and domain specific languages, high-performance computing, and physics.

We collaborate and team closely with organizations across Sandia and a broad spectrum of external partners.

On any given day you may called on to:

• Develop formal verification capabilities that leverage domain specific languages and support interfaces to standard open-source model checkers and automated theorem provers
• Solve practical software and hardware engineering problems with real-world data that involve symbolic execution and discrete‑event simulations
• Engage our capability development efforts using your skills with Haskell, OCaml, Rocq, Python, C, Rust, Verilog, VHDL, NuSMV, TLA, binary analysis, and assembly languages
• Evaluate emerging AI approaches for accelerating the construction of formal models and specifications from text sources using open source or foundational models that improve the verification workflow process but do not degrade the level of digital assurance necessary for high consequence systems that require formally verified requirements and system behaviors
• Collaborate within a multi‑disciplinary team to solve challenging digital assurance problems with national security impact

Due to the nature of the work, the selected applicant must be able to work onsite.

$139,900 - $280,600

* Salary range is estimated, and actual salary will be determined after consideration of the selected candidate's experience and qualifications, and application of any approved geographic salary differential.

• A Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline and five (5) years of directly relevant experience, or an equivalent combination of directly…