Notes: system boots fine with QAT disabled, and I can enable after boot with no immediate crash. It only appears to be when QAT is applied during bootup as part of the configuration process.
I was able to successfully boot 1.3-rolling-202010260327, suggesting https://github.com/vyos/vyos-1x/commit/4a83a9ac55caf463c876dd948445e09d316ca629 may be the culprit. (edit: see comments below)
The console output, including a kernel stacktrace, has been attached.