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
In our firmware role, you will help develop firmware for custom ASICs designed to run large AI models efficiently. You’ll work across the stack—from low-level drivers, hardware interfaces, and system initialization code to integration with runtime libraries and model-execution frameworks. Your work will focus on making the hardware operate reliably and at peak performance, enabling high-throughput inference and training workloads. You’ll collaborate with hardware, architecture, and software teams to bring up new silicon, validate features, and support real-world AI applications. We are looking for Summer '26, Fall '26, Spring '27, and Summer '27 interns.
You may be a good fit if you have
Progress towards a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Proficiency in C/C++ or Rust
Strong fundamentals in data structures and algorithms
Strong understanding of low-level software engineering
Strong understanding of hardware/software co-design
Excellent communication and collaboration skills
Strong candidates may also have (Nice to have qualifications)
Experience with Linux internals, kernel development, or driver debugging
Experience with hardware diagnostics or interpreting hardware logs
Exposure to server virtualization or CI/CD pipelines
Experience with Rust or embedded development
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every qualification.
Program details
12-week paid internship
Generous housing support for those relocating
Daily lunch and dinner in our office
Based at our office in San Jose, CA
Direct mentorship from industry leaders and world-class engineers
Opportunity to work on one of the most important problems of our time
For any questions, contact [email protected]
How we’re different
Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. 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.
Skills Required
- Progress towards a Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
- Proficiency in C/C++ or Rust
- Strong fundamentals in data structures and algorithms
- Strong understanding of low-level software engineering
- Strong understanding of hardware/software co-design
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills
Etched Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Etched and has not been reviewed or approved by Etched.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity growth is described as strong and significant equity is part of the package. High total compensation for technical roles reinforces the equity-led upside.
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Healthcare Strength — Medical, dental, and vision coverage include generous premium support, indicating robust core healthcare. This reduces employee cost exposure for essential coverage.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Daily lunch and dinner, a housing subsidy for those living near the office, relocation support, and wellness perks are highlighted. These offerings lower day-to-day living costs and support practical wellbeing.
Etched Insights
What We Do
By burning the transformer architecture into our chips, we’re creating the world’s most powerful servers for transformer inference.
