Senior Staff Security Engineer

Job description

Are you ready to build America’s energy future? Form Energy is an American manufacturing and energy technology company. We’re revolutionizing energy storage with cost-effective, multi-day technology designed to keep the electric grid secure and reliable, even during extended periods of stress. By strengthening the electric system and reimagining what’s possible, we’re giving clean energy a whole new form! In recent years, Form Energy has earned a number of accolades, including being named by TIME as a “Best Invention”, MIT Technology Review as a “Top Climate Tech Company To Watch”, and Fast Company as “One of the Next Big Things In Tech”. We are making rapid progress on our mission of delivering energy storage for a better world, and our team is growing just as rapidly to meet demand. We have signed contracts with leading electric utilities across the United States and production of our iron-air batteries is underway at our first high-volume manufacturing facility in West Virginia. Working for Form Energy is more than just a job, it’s a chance to be part of something extraordinary. And now - right as we significantly scale up battery manufacturing - might be the most exciting moment in the company’s history to join. We are assembling a team of highly talented and driven individuals across the country. Driven by our core values of humanity, excellence, and creativity, our team is determined to deliver on our mission and transform the energy landscape for the better. Feeling energized to make a meaningful impact on the world? Then keep reading - you’ve come to the right place. ROLE DESCRIPTION As a Senior Staff Product Security Engineer, you will operate as an elite individual contributor balancing hands-on systems software development (50%) with high-assurance threat modeling, protocol verification, and security design/analysis (50%). Reporting directly to the Security/Safety Architect, your primary objective will be to design, write, and rigorously verify the secure communication middleware and OTA update plans that run on our asset edge controllers. You will build deterministic, zero-trust architectures capable of maintaining total cryptographic integrity and operational resilience under active duress from highly sophisticated, nation-state level adversaries. You will be designing systems that have to remain secure for operational lifetimes of decades. Relocation assistance is available. WHAT YOU'LL DO: - Secure Middleware Engineering (50%): Write clean, production-grade, and memory-safe systems code (C, C++, Rust) running directly on asset edge hardware and interfacing with onboard Hardware Security Engines (HSE) and Modules (HSM). - Asynchronous Protocol Architecture: Evaluate, test, and adapt existing Delay-Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) standards; architect and implement custom transport wrapping where standard frameworks fall short under physical hardware constraints. - Cryptographic Disruption Handling: Build defensive state machines that maintain absolute system integrity during prolonged network blackouts—specifically solving for offline replay prevention, asynchronous certificate validity management, key expiration limits, and secure local data-at-rest queuing. - High-Assurance Analysis & Verification (50%): Apply rigorous static analysis, threat modeling, and formal verification methodologies to mathematically analyze cryptographic handshakes and communication boundaries, ensuring software cannot be forced into unverified failure states. - Adversarial Threat Modeling: Design architectural and software boundaries tailored to withstand Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) and nation-state actors targeting the bulk power system. Extend the product threat model to account for physical hardware tampering and supply-chain risk vectors. WHAT YOU'LL BRING: - Cyber Security Qualifications: - Security Architecture: - 10+ years of experience in Cyber Security, including positions that require architect-level decisions. - Demonstrated skill at architecting secure systems. - Applied Cryptography: Practical expertise in symmetric/asymmetric cryptographic primitives, mutual TLS, secure session state management, and designing robust API boundaries for distributed edge-to-cloud systems. - Application Security: 2+ years of Application Security experience (finding flaws in bespoke software) - Security Engineering: 2+ years experience directly related to building security tooling - Embedded Hardware Security: Direct experience implementing hardware root-of-trust, secure boot protocols, firmware signing, and writing code that interacts with HSMs, HSEs, or TPMs. - Systems Programming: 5+ years of experience writing production-grade, optimized code in C, C++, or Rust - High-Assurance Mindset: A track record of achieving security outcomes through rigorous software architecture, verification engineering, and clean code execution rather than policy compliance or automated compliance scanner management. - Clearance Note: No active U.S. government security clearance is required for this role. - Note: This is not an IT Security Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) role. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: - Prior experience designing high-assurance systems within the Aerospace, Defense, Financial, Semiconductor Security, High-Assurance Consultancies, or the Intelligence Community (IC) sectors. - Embedded Programming within resource-constrained environments (embedded Linux, RTOS, or bare-metal targets). - Exposure to network resilience strategies, store-and-forward mechanics, mesh topologies, or formal DTN protocol definitions (e.g., Bundle Protocol). - Familiarity with the mathematical intent behind formal verification frameworks, protocol simulation tools, or abstract interpretation engines. - Experience with Go inside modern cloud-scale data ingestion and optimization environments. - Deep technical understanding of the engineering and defensive objectives that underlie critical infrastructure protections like NERC CIP https://www.nerc.com/standards/reliability-standards, ISO 64423 https://www.isa.org/standards-and-publications/isa-standards/isa-iec-62443-series-of-standards, NIST IR 7628 https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/ir/7628/r1/final, NIST SP 800-160v1/2 https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/161/r1/upd1/final #LI-Onsite Humanity is a cornerstone of Form Energy’s culture, and we make sure our compensation and benefits reflect that. Form Energy offers competitive salaries, stock options, and a holistic benefits package to ensure all employees have what they need to thrive while working here. When it comes to you and your family’s health, we cover 100% of medical, dental, and vision premiums for full-time employees - and 80% of healthcare premiums for dependents. This starts from day one. We also offer at least 12 weeks of paid leave for new parents (up to 20 weeks for birthing parents), and generous vacation policies to give employees time to recharge when needed. To build America’s energy future, we need everyone at the table. We are proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and encourage candidates from all backgrounds to apply to our open jobs. If you may require reasonable accommodations to participate in our interview process, please contact accommodations@formenergy.com. Requests for accommodations will be treated with discretion. Form Energy is committed to maintaining the privacy of our applicants. Please be aware that we will never solicit sensitive personal information such as Social Security numbers or bank account details during the recruiting or hiring process.