below marketmost similar roles pay hereabove market
This role pays less than
52%
of similar roles. Most pay
$183,743–$243,950
— the blue band above.
At the midpoint, this role pays about
$209k
versus about
$214k
for comparable roles.
Based on 240 similar postings.
Employer
About Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is a global technology leader producing software, hardware, and cloud services including Windows, Office 365, Azure cloud platform, Xbox gaming, and Surface devices. Industry: Software & Cloud Computing
Microsoft currently has
694 open roles
on FindRole.
Listed pay typically runs
$119,800–$234,700
across 651 roles with salary data.
The Principal Silicon Security Architect leads end-to-end security architecture for complex SoCs and silicon subsystems. This role involves defining security frameworks, trust boundaries, and attacker models while driving mitigations for hardware, firmware, software, and microarchitectural threats. The architect builds hardware roots of trust, secure measured boot, device identity, and confidential computing environments including security enclaves and memory protection. Key responsibilities include defining cryptographic services, anti-rollback mechanisms, and secure debug requirements while evaluating third-party security IP. The position requires expertise in cryptographic algorithms, entropy sources, and side-channel attack mitigation. Candidates must possess deep knowledge of IOMMU/SMMU, virtualization, and PCIe architecture. The work focuses on securing data-center, cloud, gaming, and AI accelerator SoCs against physical, supply-chain, and microarchitectural threats while ensuring product diagnosability.
Lead end-to-end security architecture for complex SoCs from product requirements through post-silicon issue resolution.
Define the SoC security framework, including trust boundaries, attacker models, and hardware/firmware/software responsibilities.
Architect hardware roots of trust, secure boot, device identity, key management, and secure provisioning mechanisms.
Design isolation and confidential-computing architectures including security enclaves, memory protection, and multi-tenant security.
Define cryptographic services, evaluating algorithms and protocols for performance, power, area, and assurance tradeoffs.
Assess and mitigate side-channel, fault-injection, replay, and other physical or microarchitectural threats.
Author testable security requirements and architecture specifications while maintaining full requirements traceability.
Evaluate third-party security IP and vendor solutions to provide data-driven recommendations on security and cost.
What we're looking for
Must have a Doctorate with 3+ years experience, a Master's with 6+ years experience, or a Bachelor's with 8+ years experience in engineering.
Must have 15+ years of technical engineering experience OR a Bachelor's with 12+ years, a Master's with 8+ years, or a Doctorate with 5+ years.
Must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident, refugee, or asylee to access export-controlled information.
Experience architecting security for data-center, cloud, client, gaming, AI accelerator, infrastructure accelerator, or server-class SoCs.
Knowledge of hardware roots of trust, security enclaves, trusted execution environments, confidential computing, secure boot, attestation, and secure recovery.
Knowledge of cryptographic algorithms, protocols, key hierarchies, entropy generation, crypto agility, and hardware security modules or TPM-class technologies.
Experience analyzing and mitigating side-channel attacks, fault injection, physical attacks, microarchitectural threats, or supply-chain threats.
Experience with PCI Express (PCIe) architecture, integration, or design, including link capabilities, topology, and trusted computing via PCIe TDISP/IDE.
SoC Security
Hardware Root of Trust
Cryptography
Secure Boot
Measured Boot
Threat Modeling
C
C++
Python
Verilog
System Verilog
ARM Assembly
RISC V assembly
FIPS 140-3
ISO 21434
ASIC Design
RTL
Embedded Firmware
LLMs
Automation