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[Peter Sewell <Peter.Sewell AT cl.cam.ac.uk>]

Research positions in Systems Software Verification

Applications are invited for full-time research positions working with Professors Sewell and Krishnaswami in Systems Software Verification. The positions are available to start as soon as possible; the funds for the posts are available until 30 September 2026 in the first instance.

Systems software is critical to our modern infrastructure, but it is pervasively subject to security flaws and attacks; it is trusted but not trustworthy. Advances in program verification over the last decades have brought formal verification of such software within reach, but there remains a wide gulf between existing verification technologies and the world of conventional systems software development.

CN (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~cp526/popl23.pdf), by Pulte et al., is an ongoing project aiming to improve the user experience and reduce the cost of verification, using a separation-logic refinement type system for C systems software, the realistic Cerberus semantics of C, and integration of testing and SMT- and Rocq-based verification. The CN specification language has carefully restricted expressiveness, to enable predictable proof automation (in the decidable fragment of SMT) and runtime testing of specifications.

These positions are to help develop CN, aiming to make it possible to routinely specify, test, and verify production systems software, with high fidelity to the underlying C and hardware semantics, and with substantially reduced effort.

They are part of the VERSE project, a DARPA-funded collaboration between Galois, U. Cambridge (Pulte, Krishnaswami, Sewell, and others), U. Penn (Pierce, Head, Weirich), UMD (Lampropoulos), EPFL (Pit-Claudel), UIUC (Ringer), U.Mass (Brun), and other industry partners. CN is being applied to examples from VERSE and to the open-source pKVM hypervisor, being developed by Google to protect Android. This provides a rich environment of developers and users, including HCI work to guide the development of a truly usable system.

Cambridge and the REMS research group (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/) offer a lively environment with researchers working on various aspects of systems semantics and verification.

Essential criteria:

- Expertise in one or more of the following: SMT-based verification, proof-assistant verification and the Rocq (Coq) theorem prover, separation logic, static analysis, OCaml (the implementation language of CN), relaxed concurrency, C, systems code
- The ability to work well both independently and within the CN and VERSE teams
- The ability to contribute to the design of the system as a whole, and to the writing and presentation of research papers
- Considerable research experience with an excellent specialist knowledge in the discipline and of research methods/techniques

The positions are available at one of three grades: Research Associate (the normal postdoc grade), Senior Research Associate (for those with more experience), and Research Assistant (for those without a PhD). Formally, there are two open adverts:

- Research Associate/Senior Research Associate (£36,024- £44263 or £45,585- £57,696), NR42871, Closing date 10 September 2024
- Research Assistant/Research Associate (£29,605- £33,966 or £36,024- £44,263), NR42880, Closing date 6 September 2024

See https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/?unit=u00194 for the details and the further particulars. Please quote those reference numbers on your application and in any correspondence about these vacancies.

- for the first, you should have a PhD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, or related subject area
- for the second, appointment at Research Associate level is dependent on having a PhD. Those who have submitted but not yet received their PhD will be appointed at Research Assistant level, which will be amended to Research Associate once the PhD has been awarded.

The Department of Computer Science and Technology is an academic department that encompasses computer science along with many aspects of engineering, technology and mathematics. We have a world-wide reputation for academic research with consistent top research ratings. The Department has an open and collaborative culture, supporting revolutionary fundamental computer science research, strong cross-cutting collaborations internally and externally, and ideas which transform computing outside the University. Please see https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk to find out more about our Department.

More information on the criteria for the role can be found in the further particulars.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK. Please note that we provide the support of applying for the relevant visa (if required) and will reimburse the cost of the first visa.