PhD Student: Confidential LLM Systems

Huawei Heisenberg Research Center (Munich) is responsible for advanced technology research, architectural development, design and strategic engineering of our products.

The size of our cloud platform is gaining momentum and it is already planet scale. Huawei Cloud is one of the largest and fastest-growing platforms in the world. It has strong presence with over 40 availability zones located across 4 continents and 23 geographical regions, covering locations such as Germany, Hong Kong, South Africa, or Brazil, among others.

We invite applications for fully funded PhD research positions in computer science. These positions, generously funded by Huawei, span a duration of 3 years, and can be extended more. 

Join us as a

PhD Student: Confidential LLM Systems / Confidential Disaggregated Architectures

Successful candidates will tackle research challenges at the intersection of system and security. Topics include confidential Machine Learning (e.g., LLM), confidential disaggregated architectures, and trusted execution environments. Applicants should hold an MSc degree in computer science (or equivalent), be proficient in English, and exhibit strong teamwork abilities. Candidates with proven programming skills and expertise in security and operating systems are especially encouraged to apply.

Project description

Ensuring secure computation poses significant challenges in today's global-scale computing infrastructures. Traditionally, sensitive computations occurred within the confines of data owners' premises. However, the shift toward cloud computing, spanning data centers and extending to network edges, has fundamentally altered the threat landscape. Public and private institutions handling sensitive data — often their most valuable asset — hesitate to outsource computations without robust security guarantees. They seek end-to-end privacy preservation and security, from edge devices to core data centers. Achieving this trustworthiness is complex due to data exposure across diverse geographical locations (end users, edges, and cloud providers) and potential attacks by privileged infrastructure insiders (e.g., operators). To address these challenges, qualified candidates can choose one of the following research projects to work on.

Confidential LLM Systems: Our first project stems from the recognition that Large Language Models (LLMs) are revolutionizing industries and fundamentally altering how organizations manage data. However, they also bring data privacy challenges that demand attention. With security breaches and evolving privacy regulations, enterprises must implement strategies to safeguard sensitive data in order to fully leverage the benefits of LLMs. We aim to develop novel techniques that facilitate confidential LLM computations in untrusted infrastructures, including remote data centers.

Confidential Disaggregated Architectures: Our second project is based on the observation that there is a shift from monolithic servers to disaggregated architectures, catering to compute-intensive applications like AI/ML. Simultaneously, as confidential computing gains traction in cloud industry, it is required to extend security guarantees from the CPU to disaggregated devices. New security standards, such as TDISP (PCI-SIG's TEE Device Interface Security Protocol), emerge to address this. However, existing solutions still face several limitations. They rely on attestation mechanisms designed for traditional architectures and struggle with large-scale, low-latency disaggregated setups. To address these challenges, in the second project, we aim to achieve robust isolation and large-scale attestation to build a confidential disaggregated architecture where enables cloud users to create confidential applications/services on top of it.

Our target is not only publishing papers to top-tier conferences but also having research prototypes can be adopted in industry, e.g., deploying in Huawei Cloud. Additionally, students involved in this project will collaborate with international research groups, emphasizing the importance of teamwork.

Supervision: Decisions are made upon admission.

Your areas of expertise

• Master in computer science or other related disciplines

• Experienced with systems programing using C/C++ or Rust; and low-level programming using Assembly

• Knowledge of operating systems, distributed systems, serverless, and confidential computing technologies e.g., TEEs (Intel SGX/TDX, AMD SEV SNP, and ARM CCA)

• Able to utilize cutting-edge tools for collaborative teamwork and software development, i.e., familiar with git/gitlab, docker, K8S, etc.

• Fluent in written and spoken English

Applicants are required to submit the following documents in a single PDF file:

• Curriculum vitae

• List of 2-3 reference persons along with their email addresses (please note that we request recommendation letters directly and will disregard any self-submitted letters)

• Transcripts from undergraduate and graduate studies

• Links to master's and internship theses/reports, as well as any relevant publications

• Links to examples of personal software contributions (e.g., on GitHub or a similar platform)

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Your rewards of working here

• Our culture is characterized by innovative power and team spirit as well as the intensive exchange of knowledge and experience within our global network.

• We offer healthy meals ranging from traditional Chinese to western delicacies in our famous company canteen.

• To keep your development ongoing, you will find a broad range of training opportunities. Many online and face-to-face training programs incl. language courses in German and Mandarin.

• Our diverse and welcoming environment is shaped by different backgrounds and around 40 individual nationalities.

• Self-responsible work in a competent, motivated and constantly growing team.

Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider. Driven by a commitment to operations, ongoing innovation, and open collaboration, we have established a competitive ICT portfolio of end-to-end solutions in Telecom and enterprise networks, Devices and Cloud technology and services. Our ICT solutions, products and services are used in more than 170 countries and regions, serving over one-third of the world's population. With 197,000 employees, Huawei is committed to develop the future information society and build a Better Connected World.