Security Engineer at Etched (San Jose, CA)Security Engineer

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

At Etched, building and maintaining a secure yet friction-free computing environment is central to our mission. As a Security Engineer, you will protect the networks, systems, and applications that enable our engineers to push the limits of AI hardware. You will design, implement, and operate the monitoring, detection, and response infrastructure that safeguards Etched’s intellectual property, high-performance compute clusters, and developer workflows across both on-prem and cloud environments. You will partner with infrastructure, IT, application, and external provider teams to build systems that are secure by design, resilient under pressure, and seamless and easy to use for the end users.

This role combines hands-on technical depth with a focus on scalability and automation. You will take ownership of Etched’s security posture across infrastructure, IT, and applications, driving proactive threat detection, real-time monitoring, and rapid incident response. Your decisions will always balance maintaining full firm-wide velocity while improving our security and defense posture. You will develop tools, automation, and workflows that evolve with our rapidly growing and expanding footprint and ensure that security enhances, rather than hinders, innovation. If you are motivated by precision, ownership, and impact, you will find Etched the ideal place to advance your craft and contribute to the future of AI computing.

• Manage and harden security baselines across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud systems, ensuring strong protection while maintaining speed and usability.
• Integrate telemetry, logging, tracing, and management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across the entire environment to provide unified and comprehensive observability into infrastructure and application activity.
• Lead vulnerability management, patching, and configuration assurance programs to reduce exposure and maintain a consistent security posture.
• Partner with infrastructure, IT, and application teams to strengthen identity, access, and network security through Okta, Google Workspace, and FreeIPA.
• Implement and maintain zero-trust network architectures, SASE controls, CASB solutions, and conditional access policies that protect both users and data across environments to ensure full access and full control of our data and IP regardless of location or device.
• Operate and enhance security operations tooling, including SIEM, SOAR, and EDR/XDR platforms, to ensure comprehensive monitoring and rapid detection of threats.
• Develop and tune detection logic, automation, and playbooks for identifying and responding to threats such as insider activity, lateral movement, and anomalous behavior.
• Investigate and respond to security incidents, performing root-cause analysis, containment, and remediation while coordinating with engineering and IT.
• Build automation, scripts, AI agents, and integrations that streamline monitoring, alerting, and remediation workflows to improve efficiency and reliability.
• Establish metrics, dashboards, and feedback mechanisms to measure detection coverage, response time, and overall security health.
• Promote a culture of security awareness and ownership across engineering teams, ensuring that protection and productivity advance together.

Representative Projects

• Implementing a centralized security telemetry pipeline that aggregates logs and signals from networks, compute clusters, storage, endpoints devices, build systems, and cloud services into a unified SIEM for improved detection coverage.
• Designing and developing Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) workflows to automate repetitive tasks like alert triage, data gathering, and initial containment, which improves SOC efficiency.
• Help build a secure and flexible end user access framework that uses SDWAN, SASE, CASB, conditional access, EDR and XDR, and MDM/MAM to support productive, friction-free and secure work from any location using different devices.
• Network Security Monitoring: Configuring and monitoring network intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS) and firewalls to detect anomalies in network traffic, especially on the SDWAN and client VPN links
• Creating and refining detailed, documented incident response plans and playbooks tailored to specific scenarios, such as a breach in a lab environment or a compromised silicon testing machine.
• Conducting regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing on internal systems and applications, then coordinating with relevant teams to manage and remediate identified weaknesses.

You May Be a Good Fit If You Have

• 5-7+ years of experience in security engineering, SOC operations, detection engineering, incident response, or a similar role that blends hands-on technical work with analytical problem solving.
• Strong software engineering skills with Python, Go, Bash, (C and Rust a major plus), including the ability to design, implement, and maintain high-quality code, automation frameworks, services, and integrations that improve security, observability, and operational efficiency.
• Proficiency with SIEM and SOAR platforms, including experience building detections, dashboards, and automated workflows.
• Deep understanding of EDR and XDR platforms, endpoint security hardening, and telemetry collection across macOS, Linux, Windows, and server environments.
• Experience implementing or supporting zero trust architectures, including conditional access, SASE, CASB, and identity-driven access control models.
• Familiarity with IAM and SSO systems such as Okta, Google Workspace, and FreeIPA and the ability to design secure identity, access, and authentication policies.
• Strong networking knowledge, including SDWAN, VPN, IDS and IPS, firewall administration, segmentation strategy, and monitoring of network traffic for anomalies.
• Hands-on experience managing or building security telemetry pipelines, log ingestion frameworks, or observability systems that support both structured and unstructured data.
• Solid understanding of threat modeling, the MITRE ATT and CK framework, attacker tradecraft, and common detection and response patterns.
• Experience performing vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, or secure configuration reviews and collaborating with teams to remediate identified risks.
• Exposure to cloud and hybrid environments such as AWS, GCP, or on-prem clusters and the ability to evaluate risks and implement protective controls across these environments.

• 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 San Jose (Santana Row)
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson incompleteideas.net/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.