---
title: 'Manufacturing Operations Program Manager (Taiwan) at Etched'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/manufacturing-operations-program-manager-taiwan-etched-taoyuan-31grtwdgzvxw'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Manufacturing Operations Program Manager (Taiwan) at Etched

- **Company:** [Etched](https://feeny.ai/companies/etched)
- **Location:** Taoyuan, Taiwan
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-06
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/etched/8bce52ad-2934-4c74-a2aa-aced867f1c19/application

**Skills:** Semiconductor manufacturing operations, OPM, Supplier management, Package/substrate assembly, Probe testing, Final test flows, SMT, Mechanical assembly, Test processes, NPI builds, MP ramps, Change control procedures, ECOs, Process updates, WIP management, DFx, Yield management, Rework management, AI ASIC manufacturing, HBM package-level manufacturing

> Lead day-to-day execution at the L10 contract manufacturer in Taiwan, overseeing production performance, quality, and throughput for AI hardware. This hands-on role involves managing factory operations, resolving technical issues, and collaborating with engineering and supply chain teams to ensure scalability and ef...

## 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 Etched is hiring a Manufacturing Operations Program Manager based in Taiwan to lead day-to-day execution at our contract manufacturer. You will serve as the in-region lead responsible for ramping and sustaining production of our core AI hardware, including package assembly and server construction. You’ll work closely with Etched’s production engineering, planning, and supply chain teams to ensure quality, throughput, and readiness at every stage of the build. This is a hands-on role with direct accountability for factory performance—ideal for someone who thrives in high-volume, precision-oriented environments and enjoys on-the-ground problem-solving.

## Key responsibilities

- Own manufacturing execution at our Taiwan-based Tier 1 contract manufacturer for L6/L10/L11 production, providing day-to-day operational leadership while driving long-term scalability and manufacturing efficiency.
- Serve as the primary communication bridge between the Taiwan factory and Etched's cross-functional and regional teams, ensuring clear, timely, and effective collaboration.
- Lead factory capacity planning by tracking equipment readiness and developing mass production (MP) ramp scenarios to support changing business needs.
- Partner with the contract manufacturer, production planning, and materials teams to develop, optimize, and execute weekly production schedules.
- Oversee production performance across SMT, mechanical assembly, and test operations, ensuring yield, quality, throughput, and output targets are consistently achieved.
- Drive cross-functional resolution of manufacturing and technical issues, including DFM/DFx improvements, yield optimization, and rework reduction, in collaboration with Etched and L10/L11 engineering teams.
- Coordinate new product introduction (NPI) builds, mass production ramps, engineering change orders (ECOs), and process changes to ensure smooth production transitions.
- Provide real-time visibility into production status by proactively tracking build progress, identifying deviations, escalating risks, and driving timely corrective actions.

-

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

- 8+ years experience in data center product manufacturing operations, OPM, Contract Manufacturing or TPM roles
- Track record of working closely with tier 1 CMs in Taiwan or Asia-based fabs
- Ability to travel regularly to the factory and manage execution in person
- Excellent communication and bilingual proficiency (Mandarin and English preferred)
- Skilled at managing escalations, coordinating across time zones, and enforcing timelines

Strong candidates may also have experience with (Nice-to-have qualifications)

- Engineering background in electrical, mechanical, or packaging domains
- Exposure to MP ramp planning or cost-of-yield improvement initiatives

## Benefits

- Competitive compensation packages including generous equity packages
- Comprehensive insurance coverage and other top-of-market benefits

## 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 and Taipei, 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 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