Security Researcher – Red Team

Apple • Cupertino, CA

1d

About The Position

Apple is seeking a Senior Security Researcher to join its specialized Red Team and help secure Apple products by identifying vulnerabilities before attackers do. The role focuses on the hardware/software boundary, including vulnerabilities in the microarchitecture, memory management, and execution pipelines of modern CPUs and GPUs, as well as the low-level software running on them. The researcher will investigate side channels and architectural logic flaws and develop exploit chains that demonstrate how hardware vulnerabilities can affect kernel-level security.

The position involves targeted adversarial campaigns against modern SoCs, deep-dive research into microarchitectural behavior and hardware-assisted security features, analysis of GPU interfaces and compute workloads, and assessment of hardware mitigations. The researcher will work with hardware engineering and software kernel teams to turn findings into architectural-level mitigations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering or a related engineering field.
• Experience with modern CPU architectures, including pipeline stages, caching mechanisms, MMUs, or speculative execution.
• Experience with low-level software such as C, C++, or Assembly.
• Experience discovering vulnerabilities or developing exploits at the OS or hypervisor level, or at hardware/software interfaces; examples may include CVEs, bug bounties, conference talks, or whitepapers.
• At least 10 years of relevant industry experience.
• Extensive familiarity with ARM v8/v9 or x86 instruction sets.
• Proven understanding of GPU architectures, including execution pipelines and memory hierarchies, and how software interfaces with them.
• Deep understanding of operating system internals, kernel architecture, and memory management.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with hardware description languages such as Verilog or VHDL, or with pre-silicon security validation.
• Experience with confidential computing environments.
• Familiarity with security implications of AI/ML hardware accelerators and complex GPU workloads, such as memory handling in PagedAttention or Mixture of Experts.
• Familiarity with reverse-engineering tools such as IDA Pro and Ghidra, and dynamic analysis/debugging tools.

Responsibilities

• Design and execute targeted adversarial campaigns against the hardware/software interface of modern SoCs, particularly CPUs and GPUs.
• Conduct vulnerability research into microarchitectural behaviors, side channels, and hardware-assisted security features.
• Develop proof-of-concept exploit chains that bridge hardware vulnerabilities into kernel space and demonstrate real-world impact.
• Analyze GPU driver interfaces, command processors, and execution units, including in modern compute workloads and hardware acceleration contexts.
• Evaluate and attempt to bypass hardware mitigations such as Pointer Authentication, Memory Tagging, and virtualization boundaries.
• Collaborate with hardware engineering and software kernel teams to translate red-team findings into architectural-level mitigations.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior