Embedded Systems Cyber Security GRA - Fall 2026 - CIPHER

About the role

The Embedded Systems Vulnerability Division (ESVD) within the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory (CIPHER) is seeking Graduate Research Assistants to support teams performing embedded system cybersecurity testing starting in Fall 2026.

Responsibilities

• Analyze large problems and break them down into smaller, achievable tasks.
• Create high-level block diagrams.
• Create custom scripts to support testing.
• Solve problems from first principles.
• Work on projects involving embedded systems development, hardware reverse engineering (RE), firmware RE, software RE, and/or signals analysis.
• Work alone and alongside other students.
• Communicate technical ideas clearly.

Requirements

• Graduate Research Assistant pursuing a Master’s degree or PhD at Georgia Tech in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• Enrolled full-time (12+ credit hours).
• Minimum 3.0 GPA.
• Commitment to 15-20 hours of work per week.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with capture the flag events, firmware/software reverse engineering, or software-defined radios.
• Task/team leadership experience.
• Strong math skills and ability to learn complex engineering concepts.
• Familiarity with Linux and open source tools.
• Configuration management tools.
• Experience in 1 or more programming languages: Python, C, C++, Java, C#, etc.