Software Engineer: Secure Inter-domain Networking

80%-100%, Zurich, fixed-term

You will work for the Network Security research group led by Professor Adrian Perrig. The Network Security group conducts research on a secure inter-domain routing architecture called SCION.

Starting date is as soon as possible. The initial contract is for 12 months, with the possibility of extension.

Project background

Our inter-domain routing architecture is designed to provide route control, failure isolation, and explicit trust information for end-to-end communications. Autonomous Systems (ASes) are grouped into independent routing control sub-planes, called isolation domains which then interconnect to form complete routes. Isolation domains provide natural isolation of routing failures and human misconfiguration, give endpoints strong control for both inbound and outbound traffic, provide meaningful and enforceable trust, and enable scalable routing updates with high path freshness. As a result, our architecture provides strong resilience and security properties as an intrinsic consequence of good design principles, avoiding piecemeal add-on protocols as security patches.

Job description

Your main duties of this position will be the implementation of software for the control and data plane of network infrastructure devices as well as applications and network stack components for endhosts using SCION. This involves the design of the systems and collaboration on code development, software release, and software testing, assisting in conducting testing and evaluation of the prototypes using the global production network, as well as maintaining local testbed resources and contributing to documentation.

Profile

As the ideal candidate you have a passion for development and open source contribution, hands-on work and supporting a research organization. Furthermore, you should not be intimidated by developing large systems, enjoys working with people and will rise to meet unforeseen challenges.

• Understanding of network security and computer networks.
• Advanced degree in computer science, engineering or relevant work experience
• 5+ years of experience in design, implementation and testing of large-scale systems with particular attention to security, scalability, and high performance implementation
• 5+ years of experience in the administration of Unix-style machines, and the management of complex networks of machines.
• Experience with Go or Rust, C++, C programming in a Linux environment. Solid experience writing Python scripts
• You have experience with maintaining/contributing to OSS, familiarity with big code bases
• Comfortable with most aspects of Unix/FreeBSD/Linux system administration; for example, system installation and configuration, fundamentals of security
• Understanding of software engineering and design
• Familiar with Git version control, containers, CI/CD, Ansible, Prometheus, Grafana
• Ability to contribute to multiple projects/demands simultaneously and enjoy student supervision
• Applicants should be well versed in English.

Additional beneficial experience:

• Deep knowledge of low-level networking and Linux network internals (e.g., network stack implementation, TUN/TAP devices, Netfilter Queue, ...).
• Deep knowledge of network protocols and techniques (e.g., QUIC, TCP/IP, NAT, NAT traversal, middle boxes, tunnelling, VPNs, raw sockets, ...).
• Understanding of cryptographic operations and protocols
• You participate in the communities relevant to the position (IETF, Golang/Rust meetups, NOGs, etc.)
• Experience with Linux Kernel or mobile programming is a plus, knowledge of DPDK, AF_XDP or eBPF are appreciated. Workplace

Workplace

We offer

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