What are the responsibilities and job description for the Head of Supercomputing position at Etched?
About Etched
Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers — delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, you can build products that would be impossible with GPUs, like real-time video generation models and extremely deep & parallel chain-of-thought reasoning agents. 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 building at-scale AI inference supercomputers powered by our custom ASICs, and the Supercomputing organization is responsible for making them real, deployable, and reliable.
We are seeking a Head of Supercomputing to define and lead the architecture, software stack, and operational model for Etched’s cluster-scale AI compute systems. This leader will own the end-to-end system software and control-plane strategy — spanning orchestration, telemetry, provisioning, networking, and fleet reliability — from first silicon through production deployment.
This role combines deep systems expertise with strong organizational leadership. You will build and lead a world-class team, partnering closely with ASIC, hardware, kernel, runtime, and infrastructure teams to deliver the highest-performance AI inference systems in the world.
Key Responsibilities
Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We think most of the progress in the AI field has come from using more FLOPs to train and run models, and the best way to get more FLOPs is to build model-specific hardware. Larger and larger training runs encourage companies to consolidate around fewer model architectures, which creates a market for single-model ASICs.
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 as needed.
Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers — delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, you can build products that would be impossible with GPUs, like real-time video generation models and extremely deep & parallel chain-of-thought reasoning agents. 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 building at-scale AI inference supercomputers powered by our custom ASICs, and the Supercomputing organization is responsible for making them real, deployable, and reliable.
We are seeking a Head of Supercomputing to define and lead the architecture, software stack, and operational model for Etched’s cluster-scale AI compute systems. This leader will own the end-to-end system software and control-plane strategy — spanning orchestration, telemetry, provisioning, networking, and fleet reliability — from first silicon through production deployment.
This role combines deep systems expertise with strong organizational leadership. You will build and lead a world-class team, partnering closely with ASIC, hardware, kernel, runtime, and infrastructure teams to deliver the highest-performance AI inference systems in the world.
Key Responsibilities
- Define and drive the technical vision and roadmap for Etched’s Supercomputing software stack, from node bring-up to multi-rack clusters
- Build, scale, and lead a high-performance Supercomputing organization
- Directly manage and develop 15 engineers with a variety of experience levels
- Architect and own low-level control-plane software for system bring-up, provisioning, networking, configuration, and fleet management
- Define orchestration primitives for managing devices, nodes, racks, and full cluster deployments
- Oversee development of system services that interface directly with firmware, drivers, kernel subsystems, and runtime layers
- Establish system telemetry and observability infrastructure for customers
- Own the system software lifecycle from first silicon bring-up through stable production releases
- Collaborate with manufacturing and test engineering to integrate diagnostics and system software into factory environments
- Define reliability targets, operational metrics, and release processes for production deployments
- Recruit, mentor, and retain exceptional systems engineers and engineering leaders
- Act as a senior technical voice shaping company-wide infrastructure decisions
- 15 years of experience in system software, infrastructure, or large-scale compute systems, including 5 years leading engineering teams
- Strong understanding of hardware/software interfaces such as PCIe, RDMA, memory hierarchies, interrupts, and device drivers
- Experience building or operating cluster-scale systems (HPC, AI infrastructure, hyperscale compute, or custom accelerators)
- Proven track record of delivering complex systems from early bring-up through production
- Strong debugging skills across hardware–software interactions
- Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills
- Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage
- $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits
- Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office
- Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)
- Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more
- Daily lunch dinner in our office
- Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification
Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We think most of the progress in the AI field has come from using more FLOPs to train and run models, and the best way to get more FLOPs is to build model-specific hardware. Larger and larger training runs encourage companies to consolidate around fewer model architectures, which creates a market for single-model ASICs.
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 as needed.
Salary : $500 - $2,000