Senior Manufacturing Process Engineer

About Etched

Etched is building AI chips that are hard-coded for individual model architectures. Our first product (Sohu) only supports transformers, but has an order of magnitude more throughput and lower 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.

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly motivated Manufacturing Process Engineer to join our team. In this role, you will bridge the gap between hardware, software, and production, ensuring production line readiness for our advanced AI systems with our manufacturing partners from PCBA level to fully integrated racked solution. You will collaborate closely with cross-functional teams, including ASIC design and software engineering, test engineering, quality and reliability, to build and optimize production processes and flows that drive high yield, quality, throughput, and cost efficiency.

Key responsibilities

• End to End Manufacturing Process Development: Work closely with the ASIC design and software teams to design and implement manufacturing flows from PCBA and module assembly through system build, test, and rack integration, test, burn-in, and shipping logistics.

• Process Development: Create and document manufacturing processes and tool specifications to ensure production line flow is efficient, thorough, and aligned with product requirements. Coordinate with test engineering and quality.

• Leadership and Development: Build and train a capable manufacturing process engineering team over the coming months to support ramping of volumes across the end to end manufacturing flow, leading engineers in the US and possibly at specific critical manufacturing locations overseas, as well as guiding and instructing our outsourced manufacturing partners to ensure our overall capability, yield, and quality meet our customer’s expectations.

• ODM/CM Collaboration: Partner with production engineers at Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) and Contract Manufacturers (CMs) to help architect and design end-to-end production line flow, considering lean and six sigma practices, efficiency, and throughput models to meet capacity planning needs.

• Optimization for Ramp Conditions: Optimize time, yield, and process flows to achieve ideal ramp conditions, enabling efficient scaling to meet production demands.

• Continuous Improvement: Analyze production, test, and quality data to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies and implement improvements to boost production line performance.

• Measurement System Creation: Collaborate with the quality team to develop metrics for manufacturing process capability, consistency, and efficiency.

• Capacity Planning: Develop and refine throughput models to ensure production meets current and future demand with optimal resource utilization.

You may be a good fit if you have

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related field.

• 10+ years of experience in manufacturing process design and engineering, production engineering, or a related role in the technology or electronics industry.

• Strong understanding of system-level and functional testing methodologies.

• Lean manufacturing, statistical process control, and/or six sigma experience. LSS (Lean Six Sigma) certification is a plus.

• Experience working with custom semiconductor and complex PCBA technologies, particularly PCBA assembly and SMT processes.

• Proven ability to architect production line setups, including end-to-end flow design and capacity planning, in collaboration with ODMs and CMs.

• Experience with assembly and integration of blind mate connections and complex cable management and high-speed interconnect

• Proficiency in data analysis tools and methods for optimizing production time, yield, and throughput.

• Excellent problem-solving skills with a focus on process optimization and continuous improvement.

• Strong communication and teamwork skills to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.

• Hands-on experience with server-level and rack level assembly, integration, and diagnostics.

• Familiarity with automation tools and techniques for production lines.

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

How we’re different

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 West San Jose, 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.