HSM Lead

QNu Labs is seeking a curious and motivated academic professional with a foundation in Physics or a related discipline to join our Quantum Communication initiatives. This role is ideal for someone passionate about teaching, hands-on learning, and eager to be coached and trained. You will be part of our mission to advance India's National Quantum Mission by collaborating with colleges, faculty, and students to bring quantum concepts to life through learning and experimentation.

We are looking for a Mid-Level Hardware Security Module (HSM) Architect with strong handson experience in C/C++ and a solid understanding of cryptographic systems and HSM architecture. The ideal candidate will be responsible for designing, developing, and optimising secure cryptographic services, key management systems, and HSM firmware/software components with a focus on performance, scalability, and high availability.

Responsibilities:

• Design and architect HSM software/firmware components including key management, cryptographic services, and secure storage.
• Develop and maintain high-performance, secure C/C++ code for cryptographic and HSM subsystems.
• Define and implement HSM interfaces such as PKCS#11, KMIP, REST, and proprietary APIs.
• Work on secure boot, firmware update, and trusted execution environments.
• Design solutions for multi-tenant, high-availability, and fault-tolerant HSM deployments.
• Perform threat modelling, security reviews, and cryptographic design validation.
• Optimise concurrency, multi-threading, and hardware acceleration (PCIe, FPGA, TPM, etc. ).
• Collaborate with system, network, and cloud architects for HSM integration in enterprise and cloud environments.
• Ensure compliance with standards such as FIPS 140-2/3, Common Criteria, and ETSI where applicable.
• Provide technical leadership and mentor junior engineers.

Requirements:

• Strong proficiency in C and C++ (multithreading, memory management, performance tuning).
• Deep understanding of HSM architecture: Key lifecycle management, Secure key storage and isolation, Partitioning, multi-tenancy, and access control, HA, clustering, and disaster recovery.
• Experience with cryptographic standards and APIs: PKCS#11 (Cryptoki), OpenSSL, OpenCryptoki, KMIP, JCE/JCA (nice to have).
• Understanding of secure OS concepts: trusted execution, secure memory, side-channel mitigation.
• Experience with Linux system programming and kernel/user-space interaction.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with commercial HSMs (Thales, Utimaco, Safenet, AWS CloudHSM, etc. ).
• Knowledge of FIPS 140-2/3 certification process.
• Exposure to cloud-based KMS and HSM virtualisation.
• Experience with FPGA or hardware acceleration.
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Electronics, Cryptography, or a related field.