Principal Security Architect
Graphcore
Salary undisclosed
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Description
About Graphcore
Graphcore is a globally recognized leader in Artificial Intelligence computing systems. The company designs advanced semiconductors and data center hardware that provide the specialized processing power needed to drive AI innovation, while delivering the efficiency required to support its broader adoption.
As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore is a member of an elite family of companies responsible for some of the world’s most transformative technologies. We are opening a new AI Engineering Campus in Austin, which will play a central role in Graphcore's work building the future of AI computing.
About the Role
We are seeking a Principal Security Architect to design, maintain and secure scalable infrastructure solutions for cryptographic key management. In this strategic role, you will be responsible for evaluating, deploying and manage Hardware Secure Modules from the ground up, ensuring compliance with standards across different regions. You will also enable multiple teams by supporting them for control and automation. You will be expected to drive and implement policies for key and certificate creation, rotation, and revocation.
Collaboration with stakeholders to analyze requirements and implement robust access controls is essential while demonstrating operational excellence.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design and deploy scalable, secure infrastructure solutions from scratch, aligned with business requirements and security standards.
- Hardware Secure Module ownership and governance.
- Develop organizational standards, policies, access models, and workflows to ensure consistent, secure usage of the platform.
- Conduct risk and compliance assessments to support system security plans and disaster recovery strategies.
- Collaborate on requirement analysis, user and key story operations, and capacity planning to ensure optimal resource utilization.
- Advocate for best practices in secret lifecycle management, authentication methods, and identity federation.
- Create tooling, automation, onboarding guides, and libraries to help teams access the platform easily and correctly.
REQUIREMENTS
- Education: MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Cryptography, Cybersecurity, or a related highly technical field.
- Experience: 10+ years of deep technical experience and proven experience in Public Key Infrastructure, Hardware Security Modules deployment and management.
- Strong knowledge of encryption technologies, security controls, and compliance frameworks.
- Strong understanding of authentication backends (OIDC, LDAP, cloud IAM), secret engines, PKI, encryption, and token/credential lifecycle.
- Familiarity with infrastructure maintenance, disaster recovery planning, and capacity management.
- Skilled in coding standards, secure software development lifecycle, and configuration management processes.
- Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform preferred) and CI/CD automation.
- Leadership & Communication: Exceptional ability to distill complex, theoretical security concepts into strict engineering specifications, and the gravitas to influence engineering teams and executive leadership without direct authority.
DIFFERENTIATORS
- Experience integrating Vault with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and CI/CD pipelines.
- Standards Body Contributions: Active participation, authorship, or contribution to industry security standards (e.g., TCG, OCP Security Project, Linux Foundation, or Arm security working groups).
- Knowledge of SPIFFE/SPIRE, workload identity, or zero-trust architectures.
- Post-Quantum Readiness: Forward-looking understanding of Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) and its upcoming impact on hardware lifecycle and secure boot.
- Understanding of Platform Root of Trust, Platform Identity, DICE and attestation.
United States Benefits Overview
Graphcore offers competitive compensation and benefits designed to support employees' health, financial well-being, work-life needs, and professional growth. Benefits and programs for eligible U.S. employees may include:
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with options that may extend to eligible dependents.
- Mental health, wellness, and employee assistance resources.
- Retirement savings benefits and company contributions where applicable.
- Paid vacation, sick time, company holidays, and parental or family leave in accordance with relevant plans and policies.
- Life insurance and short-term or long-term disability coverage.
- Flexible working hours and hybrid working arrangements where compatible with the role and team requirements.
- Professional-development resources, learning programs, office amenities, and team-led activities.
Benefits vary by work location, employment status, scheduled hours, and plan eligibility and are subject to the terms of the applicable plans and company policies. This overview is not a contract or guarantee of benefits.
Equal Opportunity and Accommodations
Graphcore is an equal opportunity employer. We consider qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, ancestry, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable law.
Graphcore is committed to an inclusive and accessible hiring process. If you need a reasonable accommodation to participate in the application or interview process, please let the recruiting team know.
Candidate Privacy
Personal information submitted during the recruiting process will be handled in accordance with Graphcore's applicable candidate privacy notices.
Benefits
- Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with options that may extend to eligible dependents.
- Mental health, wellness, and employee assistance resources.
- Retirement savings benefits and company contributions where applicable.
- Paid vacation, sick time, company holidays, and parental or family leave in accordance with relevant plans and policies.
- Life insurance and short-term or long-term disability coverage.
- Flexible working hours and hybrid working arrangements where compatible with the role and team requirements.
- Professional-development resources, learning programs, office amenities, and team-led activities.
About this role
Graphcore is seeking a Principal Security Architect to own the end-to-end hardware and firmware security strategy for its next-generation AI server systems built on Arm technology. This role sits within Advanced Architecture and spans the full computing stack—from system-on-chip and management controllers through firmware, virtualization, and container environments—with responsibility for protecting AI models, training data, inference workloads, and platform IP against remote, physical, and supply-chain threats.
The work involves defining security architecture across silicon, boards, and system software; leading integration of Arm's secure computing frameworks and Realm Management Extension technologies; establishing trust anchors for platform and management controllers; specifying security requirements for high-speed interconnects like PCIe Gen5/6; and conducting system-level threat modeling for side-channel attacks, fault injection, and physical tampering. You will translate security goals into engineering specifications, guide the hardening of low-level software stacks (UEFI, Arm Trusted Firmware, OpenBMC), architect attestation frameworks, and partner across silicon, hardware, firmware, and systems teams to resolve tradeoffs and incorporate security into roadmaps.
This role demands deep expertise in Arm architecture and security technologies (Armv9, TrustZone, Confidential Compute Architecture, Realm Management Extension), extensive platform and system-on-chip security experience at a principal or staff level, and strong knowledge of hardware threats, cryptography, secure boot, firmware lifecycle management, and how hardware primitives interact with Linux kernel internals, KVM, and trusted execution environments. You'll need the ability to lead without direct authority, communicate complex security concepts to both technical and executive audiences, and convert threat analyses into precise requirements. Experience with ML security, participation in standards bodies, SmartNIC security, or confidential computing for AI is valued but not required.
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