Embedded Security PhD Intern

At MITRE, your passion fuels work that impacts our nation and improves lives. This is where your skills strengthen national security, cybersecurity, health, transportation, and citizen services. We’re a nonprofit engineering, applied research, and advanced technology organization working in the public interest. With objectivity and integrity at our core, we lead federally funded research and development centers for U.S. government agencies – collaborating with industry and academia to deliver integrated, high-impact solutions that advance our nation’s health, security, and prosperity. Our people tackle the toughest technical challenges, supported by competitive benefits, meaningful career development, and a culture of innovation, collaboration, and technical excellence. Choose MITRE for a career with purpose — and help shape the future.

We are seeking to hire talented and creative engineering students with a focus on embedded systems development and/or embedded security to support several different advanced research and development projects of national significance.

Qualified candidates will join teams of technical experts in embedded systems development and/or security. Our multi-disciplinary teams perform hands-on development of electronic systems and research, analyze, and develop proof-of-concept prototypes to demonstrate and advance the state-of-the-art in embedded security. Our diverse set of sponsors and research objectives provide a wide variety of interesting work opportunities.

Job Responsibilities

Project opportunities in embedded security include:

Assist in the development of new approaches and countermeasures for emerging threats to embedded systems

Help develop prototypes (hardware and software) to demonstrate advanced capabilities

Perform hands-on security assessments of embedded systems

Conduct experiments with commercial or customized wireless protocols

Develop software for interfacing with and controlling lab equipment for data collection, measurement, and analysis

Project opportunities in electronic systems development include:

Embedded software development

Design and support in FPGA development

Hardware/software integration and validation

RF design and testing

Basic Qualifications

Sustained excellence in academic performance

Must be a student enrolled full-time in an accredited degree-seeking program in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science or a related degree and continue to be enrolled full-time the semester following the internship.

Experience with developing and analyzing hardware, embedded, and/or IoT systems

Experience with programming in languages such as Python, Java, C++, or C

Effective oral and written communication skills

Demonstrated interest in serving the public

Prior experience as an intern at MITRE in the last 12 months

This position has an onsite requirement of 3 days per week minimum

Preferred Qualifications

EE/CE: Courses in the areas of Circuits, Digital Logic, Electronics, and Computer Architecture.

CS: Courses in the areas of Algorithms, Discrete Mathematics, and Digital Logic.

Highly Desired: Courses in FPGA design, reverse engineering (firmware and/or hardware), computer security concepts, wireless communications, and/or embedded systems. Experience applying AI to reverse engineering tasks and/or embedded systems development.

Clearance: In addition to passing MITRE’s employment background check, you may be submitted for a U.S. Government Security clearance. This is determined by the Department of Defense’s adjudicative guidelines for receiving a clearance, to include U.S. citizenship. Other jobs may require vetting for various levels of agency public trust, fitness, suitability, controlled access, and special programs access determination consistent with the work program to which you are assigned.

This requisition requires the candidate to have a minimum of the following clearance(s):

None

This requisition requires the hired candidate to have or obtain, within one year from the date of hire, the following clearance(s):

None

Salary compensation range and midpoint:

$89,200 - $111,500 - $133,800 Annual

Work Location Type:

Onsite

Commitment to Non-Discrimination

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to disability, status as a protected veteran or any other status protected by applicable federal, state, local or international law.

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