Head of Supercomputing

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 team leads and senior engineers with a variety of experience levels - Drive 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 and in-house operations - 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 - Act as a senior technical voice shaping company-wide infrastructure decisions Must-Have Skills and Experience - 8+ years of experience in system software, infrastructure, or large-scale compute systems, including 3+ years leading engineering teams - 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 Additional Skills and Experience - Experience designing observability systems for complex compute environments, supporting both internal engineering operations and customer deployments. - Experience building pipelines for high-volume, heterogeneous telemetry and unstructured logs, including storage, retention, and querying. - Experience developing analysis tools that turn system data into actionable insights for debugging, performance optimization, and reliability. - Strong understanding of hardware/software interfaces such as PCIe, RDMA, memory hierarchies, interrupts, and device drivers Benefits - Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage - $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits - Housing subsidy of $2,500 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. 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.