Head of Supercomputing
Etched
| Company | Etched |
| Category | Engineering |
| Location | San Jose |
| Remote | On-site (inferred) |
| Employment | Not stated |
| Level | Director |
| Salary | Not stated by the employer |
| Posted | 26 Mar 2026 |
| Last verified | 3 Aug 2026 |
| Source | Employer ATS (ashby) |
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 building at-scale AI inference supercomputers powered by our chips, 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
Must-Have Skills and Experience
- 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
Benefits
- 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
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, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. Our addr