System Security Research Engineer – OS and Device Protection

About the role

The Digital Trust Lab at Huawei Canada is seeking a System Security Research Engineer to advance protection for operating system kernels, firmware, mobile systems, and devices. You will lead research, prototype innovative security technologies, and translate findings into hardened product solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Conduct research and prototyping of new security technologies to protect OS kernels, firmware, mobile systems, and devices.
• Analyze advanced threat vectors such as memory corruption, privilege escalation, side‑channel attacks, and firmware exploitation.
• Evaluate and extend hardware‑based protections including Hypervisors, Trusted Execution Environments (TEE), and Secure Boot.
• Design security features that improve isolation, access control, exploit resistance, or threat detection.
• Collaborate with product teams to transition research into practical, hardened solutions.
• Monitor emerging vulnerabilities, industry trends, and academic advancements.
• Publish research, propose patents, and present at internal or external technical forums.

Required profile

• PhD or Master’s degree in Computer/Electrical Engineering or related field, with a research mindset and 3+ years of industry‑relevant R&D experience (asset).
• Strong understanding of operating system internals, including memory management, process scheduling, and kernel/user separation.
• Proficiency in at least one native development language: C, C++, or Rust.
• Experience with low‑level system programming and debugging.
• Familiarity with modern threat‑prevention technologies such as sandboxing, Control‑Flow Integrity (CFI), ASLR, and DEP.
• Deep knowledge of memory‑safety concepts, including buffer overflows, use‑after‑free, and heap exploitation techniques.
• Knowledge of hardware security features: virtualization (Hypervisors, VT‑x/AMD‑V), TEE (ARM TrustZone, Intel SGX), MMU, IOMMU, and Secure Boot processes.

Required skills

• C
• C++
• Rust
• Low‑level system programming
• Debugging
• Sandboxing
• Control‑Flow Integrity (CFI)
• Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)
• Data Execution Prevention (DEP)
• Buffer overflow exploitation
• Use‑after‑free exploitation
• Heap exploitation
• Virtualization (Hypervisors, VT‑x, AMD‑V)
• Trusted Execution Environments (ARM TrustZone, Intel SGX)
• Memory Management Unit (MMU)
• I/O Memory Management Unit (IOMMU)
• Secure Boot