---
title: 'Developer Experience Engineer at Etched'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/developer-experience-engineer-etched-san-jose-y2w99vexbr48'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# Developer Experience Engineer at Etched

- **Company:** [Etched](https://feeny.ai/companies/etched)
- **Location:** San Jose, CA
- **Compensation:** $275k+
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-02-19
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/etched/3f83fd5f-5e50-403a-9a03-7ddb56502f49/application

**Skills:** Python, Slurm, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Buildkite, Terraform, Ansible, AWS, GCP, CI/CD, Airflow, Prefect, Dagster, Bazel, CMake

> Enhance developer productivity, automation, and infrastructure across hardware and software teams by building systems that accelerate chip design, simulation, and AI model deployment in a hybrid cloud environment.

## Job description

## About Etched

Etched is building hardware for frontier intelligence. We co-design chips, racks, software, and manufacturing to deliver best-in-class throughput and latency across both prefill and decode workloads. Our first products are heavily focused on inference. Backed by hundreds of millions from top-tier investors and staffed by leading engineers, Etched is redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history.

Job Summary

We are looking for a Developer Experience Engineer to enhance developer productivity, automation, and infrastructure across our hardware and software teams. You will work at the intersection of DevOps, software engineering, and high-performance computing (HPC), building systems that accelerate chip design, simulation, and AI model deployment in a cloud and on-prem hybrid environment.

## Key responsibilities

- Develop and maintain automation tools to streamline development, testing, and deployment workflows.
- Optimize and manage Slurm-based job scheduling for AI workloads, simulation, and chip design workflows.
- Build observability solutions using Grafana, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry for monitoring pipelines, infrastructure, and compute clusters.
- Manage and optimize containerized environments using Docker and Kubernetes to enhance scalability and reproducibility.
- Enhance build, test, and deployment pipelines with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Buildkite, or Bazel.
- Develop caching and artifact management systems to reduce build times and improve dependency resolution.
- Integrate and manage cloud resources (AWS, GCP) for scaling compute, storage, and hybrid workloads.
- Support security and compliance efforts including secrets management and access control.
- Document and share best practices for efficient developer tooling and workflows.

You may be a good fit if you have

- Strong Python skills for automation, scripting, and infrastructure development.
- Experience with Slurm job scheduling in an HPC or hybrid environment.
- Hands-on experience with observability and monitoring tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
- Expertise with Docker and Kubernetes, including Helm charts and cluster management.
- Proficiency in modern CI/CD pipeline management with tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or Buildkite.
- Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or Ansible.
- Knowledge of cloud infrastructure, compute, and storage optimization on AWS or GCP.

Strong candidates may also have experience with

- Data pipelining for AI/ML workflows using Airflow, Prefect, or Dagster.
- Build system expertise with Bazel, CMake, or distributed build systems.
- Secrets management tools such as Vault, SOPS, AWS Secrets Manager, or GCP Secret Manager.
- AI/ML model training workflows and monitoring GPU-accelerated workloads.
- Exposure to FPGA or ASIC development environments and workflows.

## Benefits

- Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with generous premium coverage
- Housing subsidy of $2,000/month for those living within walking distance of the office
- Daily lunch and dinner in our office
- Relocation support for those moving to West San Jose
- Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

## How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both and work across disciplines as needed.

## About Etched

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Etched designs and manufactures specialized ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) that are hardwired to run transformer-based AI models, offering an order-of-magnitude improvement in inference cost and energy efficiency over general-purpose GPUs.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B / later stage; total raised $800M as of June 2026)
- **Headquarters**: San Jose, California, USA (also has offices in Cupertino, CA; Sacramento, CA; and small presence in Taiwan, Canada, UK, Bulgaria)
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Gavin Uberti (CEO), Robert Wachen (President & COO), Chris Zhu (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI hardware / semiconductor design / computer hardware manufacturing
- **Target customers**: Frontier AI labs, hyperscalers, and enterprises running large-scale transformer inference workloads (B2B, enterprise)
- **Mission / purpose**: Build hardware for superintelligence – specifically, the world’s most powerful servers for transformer inference.

## Products & Services
- **Sohu Chip (ASIC)**: A transformer-specific ASIC manufactured by TSMC. It burns the transformer architecture directly into silicon, eliminating the overhead of general-purpose GPUs for inference.
- **Frontier Inference Clusters**: Full-stack systems that bundle the Sohu chip with custom-designed racks, networking, and software. Customers place orders for complete systems, not just chips. Etched claims they deliver more tokens per dollar and per watt for dense models, sparse MoEs, diffusion models, and more.
- **Software Stack**: Includes compiler and runtime optimizations built by a team with deep experience (former Apache TVM developer, ex-Google TPU software lead).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: $5 billion post-money valuation (as of December 2025 / disclosed June 2026)
- **Key Metric**: $1 billion in contract orders (booked) for its systems; total funding of $800M (including an unannounced $500M round closed Dec 2025 led by Stripes)
- **Notable Investors**: Stripes (lead), VentureTech Alliance, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Two Sigma, Ribbit Capital. Angel investors include Andrej Karpathy, Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Arthur Mensch, Scott Wu, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Thiel. Earlier backers: Positive Sum, Primary Venture Partners.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount: 258 employees (as of mid-2026), up 141% year-over-year
  - 100+ active job postings across engineering, operations, and business functions
  - $500M raise in late 2025; first chip manufactured by TSMC in 2025 and now being tested with customers
  - Talent sources include Google (21), Apple (17), NVIDIA (16), Tesla (11), Intel (10), AMD (5)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Transformer-specific architecture**: Unlike GPUs (which are general-purpose), Etched’s chip is hardwired only for transformer operations, enabling drastically lower cost and latency for today’s dominant AI model architecture.
- **Full-stack system play**: By selling entire inference clusters (chip + rack + software), Etched captures more value and delivers a turnkey solution competitive with NVIDIA’s DGX/HGX systems.
- **Deeply experienced leadership**:
  - CEO Gavin Uberti (Harvard math researcher, AI compiler expert, Apache TVM contributor)
  - President Robert Wachen (co-founded Prod AI incubator; Thiel Fellow)
  - VP of Platform (ex-NVIDIA 22 years, built HGX/DGX systems)
  - VP of Software (ex-Google DeepMind, lead TPU v1–v5 software)
  - Chief Architect Saptadeep Pal (former Auradine co-founder, chiplet expert)
  - VP of Hardware Engineering Ajat Hukkoo (ex-Cypress CTO, shipped >$1B revenue products)

## Strategic Focus
- **Scale manufacturing and customer deliveries**: With the first chip successfully fabricated, the company is now testing production systems and aims to fulfill $1B in pre-orders.
- **Expand engineering talent**: Aggressively hiring across silicon design, validation, infrastructure, optics, and software to support volume ramp.
- **Maintain technological lead**: Continue refining the ASIC for future transformer variants and MoE mixtures while building out a partner ecosystem.

## Why Work Here
- **Mission-driven, high-impact engineering**: “Building the hardware for superintelligence” – the company is solving one of the hardest problems in compute (inference efficiency) with a focused team.
- **Top-tier team and learning environment**: Colleagues from Google, NVIDIA, Apple, Tesla, Broadcom, and Intel; exposure to full-stack chip-to-system design.
- **In-office culture**: All roles are in-office (Cupertino and San Jose, CA). The company emphasizes on-site collaboration for hardware development. Notable perks are not heavily advertised, but compensation is competitive for the AI hardware space (equity-heavy).
- **Growth trajectory**: 141% headcount growth YoY, hundreds of open roles, and a $5B valuation signal strong backing and career acceleration potential.
- **Intellectual challenge**: Work on chip simulation, RTL design, system validation, or software infrastructure for cutting-edge AI inference.

## Sources
1. [etched.com/careers](https://www.etched.com/careers)
2. [builtin.com/company/etched](https://builtin.com/company/etched)
3. [linkedin.com/company/etched-ai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/etched-ai)
4. [cbinsights.com/company/etched](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/etched)
5. [techcrunch.com/2026/06/30/nvidia-competitor-etched-hits-5b-valuation-1b-in-sales-for-ai-chip/](https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/30/nvidia-competitor-etched-hits-5b-valuation-1b-in-sales-for-ai-chip/)

## Other roles at Etched

- [EE Hardware System Engineer (TW)](https://feeny.ai/job/ee-hardware-system-engineer-tw-etched-taipei-fgncym9kzy6w) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Silicon Validation Engineer, Software](https://feeny.ai/job/silicon-validation-engineer-software-etched-san-jose-qhp3k9xqy5vr) — San Jose, CA
- [RMA & Repair Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/rma-repair-lead-etched-san-jose-q0tmchh0yyrj) — San Jose, CA
- [Advanced Packaging SI/PI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/advanced-packaging-si-pi-engineer-etched-san-jose-47he7k0hp901) — San Jose, CA
- [Substrate IC Package Layout Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/substrate-ic-package-layout-design-engineer-etched-san-jose-g36wmxc8ww9r) — San Jose, CA
- [ECAD Librarian](https://feeny.ai/job/ecad-librarian-etched-san-jose-0h5kvj2cxzk4) — San Jose, CA
- [Inventory Warehouse Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/inventory-warehouse-coordinator-etched-san-jose-49b0bs49ce57) — San Jose, CA
- [Logistics Analyst (Taiwan)](https://feeny.ai/job/logistics-analyst-taiwan-etched-taipei-5xzc094cqgzn) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Communications](https://feeny.ai/job/communications-etched-san-jose-3f4bdr97hysp) — San Jose, CA
- [Production Finance](https://feeny.ai/job/production-finance-etched-san-jose-qfypbv9eh0ws) — San Jose, CA