Systems Security Engineer

Position Description

Swarmbotics is seeking an experienced, highly capable Systems Security Engineer to own and execute the security posture of our autonomous swarm systems from the ground up. This individual contributor role will be responsible for designing secure system architectures, implementing technical security controls, managing compliance and accreditation activities, and overseeing day-to-day security operations across our fleet of autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles (“FireAnts”), cloud-hosted services, and supporting infrastructure.

This role is critical to ensuring our products meet the highest standards for security, resilience, and compliance in demanding defense and national security environments. The Systems Security Engineer will work closely with embedded, autonomy, cloud, and systems engineering teams to ensure security is architected into our platforms from first principles — spanning edge computing environments, GPU-accelerated platforms, secure communications, and cloud-based fleet management systems — while also building the internal security policies, monitoring processes, and compliance documentation that will scale with the company.

The ideal candidate has deep technical expertise in embedded and cloud security within complex systems, has supported defense or national security programs, and is comfortable serving as the primary security owner in a fast-moving startup where processes are built from scratch and execution matters more than bureaucracy.

Required Qualifications

• Strong desire to work in a very fast-paced, fluid startup environment
• Ability to work onsite in the Phoenix, AZ area
• Minimum 6 years of experience in systems security engineering, cybersecurity, or a closely related engineering discipline
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Cybersecurity, or related technical field
• Proven experience securing complex embedded systems, including secure boot, trusted execution environments, firmware security, key management, and hardware security modules
• Experience securing heterogeneous computing environments combining CPUs and GPUs (e.g., NVIDIA Jetson-class platforms)
• Experience designing and enforcing security architectures for cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, or GCP), including IAM, network segmentation, encryption, and secure multi-tenancy
• Strong understanding of network security fundamentals, including firewalls, VPNs, TLS/mTLS, zero-trust architectures, and secure communications protocols
• Experience securing vehicle-to-cloud communications and distributed systems
• Ability to derive and decompose system-level security requirements from customer needs, threat intelligence, and regulatory frameworks
• Experience conducting vulnerability analysis, threat modeling, and system-level security assessments across embedded and cloud environments
• Experience implementing continuous monitoring practices, vulnerability tracking, and remediation coordination
• Experience supporting compliance and accreditation activities, including preparation of documentation for Authority to Operate (ATO) approvals
• Working knowledge of federal cybersecurity frameworks such as NIST, FISMA, CMMC, or similar
• Ability to brief security architectures and compliance status to government customers and company leadership
• Experience coordinating security incident response activities
• Sufficient software background to advise on secure coding practices, CI/CD security integration, and secure API design
• Excitement about contributing to the defense of the United States and its allies
• Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Secret security clearance (no active clearance required)

Preferred Qualifications

• Previous experience serving as the primary or sole security engineer within a small or early-stage hardware or robotics company
• Background in defense systems, autonomous vehicles, robotics platforms, aerospace systems, or other complex cyber-physical systems
• Experience preparing systems for government accreditation and working directly with Authorizing Officials
• Active U.S. TS/SCI security clearance
• Strong programming and security analysis skills in C++ and Python
• Experience securing GPU programming environments (CUDA, TensorRT)
• Experience conducting penetration testing, red teaming, or structured vulnerability assessments for embedded or distributed systems
• Experience with cloud security tooling, including infrastructure-as-code security scanning, container security, secrets management, and SIEM/SOAR platforms
• Experience securing real-time or low-latency communication protocols (e.g., MQTT, DDS, WebSockets, or custom telemetry systems)
• Familiarity with ROS and robotics software stacks
• Experience with supply chain risk management, configuration management, and system-level security testing processes

The preceding description is not designed to be a complete list of all duties and responsibilities required for the position. Swarmbotics is an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be treated with respect and receive equal consideration for employment without regard to race, color, caste, creed, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, disability, uniform service, Veteran status, age, or any other protected characteristic per federal, state, or local law.