Research Assistant/Associate in CHERI Operating Systems (Fixed Term)

Fixed-term: The funds for this post are available until 31 March 2026.

A six-month position is available for a full-time Research Assistant/Associate in CHERI Operating Systems who will contribute to the engineering of prototype CHERI-enabled operating systems, including support for userlevel collocated processes in the CheriBSD operating system.

The role will be within the new CHERI Research Centre (CRC), which performs CHERI-related research and facilitates industrial adoption of the CHERI technology. The successful candidate will contribute to designing, developing, and evaluating userlevel executives implementing high-performance IPC between multiple processes executing within the same address space. Target platforms will use the Arm Morello and CHERI-RISC-V architectures and microarchitectures.

The successful candidate for this role will have strong past engineering experience with both CHERI and CheriBSD, and be familiar with the implementation of CHERI-based IPC and compartmentalisation.

Main Responsibilities

• Develop a userspace software executive enabling CHERI-based IPC between multiple processes within the same virtual address space.
• Adapt applications such as web servers and web browsers to use these facilities.
• Develop and implement an evaluation strategy for these prototypes.

In addition, working within the CHERI Research Centre (CRC), contribute to the larger goals of the centre including:

• Support the creation of web and other resources to enable potential adopters to learn about CHERI.
• Support hosting of CRC events including the CHERI Blossoms 2026 conference.
• Contribute to maintaining common CRC software-engineering infrastructure such as Continuous Integration (CI) and test hardware.
• Engage with standardisation efforts such as CHERI extensions to the RISC-V architecture and memory-safety specifications.

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.

Applicants should contact Professor Robert Watson for further information: robert.watson@cl.cam.ac.uk

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Please quote reference NR47298 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.