Senior Principal Software Engineer

This is your opportunity to apply formal specification and verification to real-world cloud-scale distributed systems, as part of an engineering organization that highly values formal methods. OCI has been using formal methods--primarily TLA+, as well as some others--since we started in 2014. Oracle is a founding premier member of the TLA+ Foundation industry-standards body, and OCI employees are very active in the TLA+ community. We are expanding our in-house formal verification team to handle major new development initiatives. OCI is building our next generation of core data-planes and cloud automation, for which correctness and reliability are critical. We know that achieving those properties requires use of formal methods. Our formal verification team assists development teams across all of OCI, so the role has high visibility and impact. We are looking for self-motivated engineers with passion and expertise for practical application of formal methods to complex problems. You should value collaboration, innovation, pragmatism, and be focused on achieving results. Responsibilities We use formal specification and verification methods to help developers of complex systems find very subtle bugs that are unlikely to be caught by normal testing techniques. We focus on preventing the kinds of bugs that would cause the most severe problems for our customers, in particular data loss/corruption or security vulnerabilities. We achieve this via the following activities: * Help engineers to state their requirements and algorithms much more precisely than conventional design docs. This typically uncovers many ambiguities and invalid assumptions – i.e. design bugs. * Provide additional ways to describe and think about requirements and design. This change in perspective can itself reveal problems. * Review critical sections of code, to reverse-engineer the higher-level algorithm or design that has been implemented. This 'recovered design' can then be formally verified to satisfy its intended properties. * Use tools such as model-checkers, constraint solvers, and increasingly (due to rapid progress with AI) machine-checked proof, in order to check a precise design against precise correctness properties. Additionally, we are helping to create new methodologies and tools to enable safe and productive use of Generative AI for designing, implementing, and testing mission-critical components and services. For example: * Automatically generate formal specifications from informal descriptions to remove ambiguity. Then validate that those specifications accurately capture the intent of the author -- i.e. that the resulting formal specifications allow behaviors that are desired, while disallowing all behaviors that should be prohibited. * Automatically generate implementation code from a formal specification, and then validate that the generated code satisfies the specification, e.g. via trace-validation/conformance testing, or by using code-level verification systems such as Verus, or by other techniques that you find or invent. * Automatically reverse-engineer a formal specification from code, at an appropriate level of abstraction such that the extracted specification can then be verified against high-level correctness properties. * Using AI to find inductive invariants and write mechanically checked proofs. Only Oracle brings together the data, infrastructure, applications, and expertise to power everything from industry innovations to life-saving care. And with AI embedded across our products and services, we help customers turn that promise into a better future for all. Discover your potential at a company leading the way in AI and cloud solutions that impact billions of lives. True innovation starts when everyone is empowered to contribute. That’s why we’re committed to growing a workforce that promotes opportunities for all with competitive benefits that support our people with flexible medical, life insurance, and retirement options. We also encourage employees to give back to their communities through our volunteer programs. We’re committed to including people with disabilities at all stages of the employment process. If you require accessibility assistance or accommodation for a disability at any point, let us know by emailing View email address on click.appcast.io [View email address on click.appcast.io] or by calling View phone number on click.appcast.io in the United States. Oracle is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Oracle will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.