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
As a Physical Design intern for Etched, you will be responsible for realizing our front-end designs in silicon, helping Etched to improve iteration speed to final signoff. You will assist in developing and running Physical Design flows to synthesize blocks, automate final design checks, and advise RTL design decisions. We are looking for 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 electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related field.
Familiarity with high-speed digital logic
Exposure to ASIC or SoC design concepts
Familiarity with SystemVerilog, UVM, or Python
Familiarity with verification work and writing test benches
Familiarity with physical design flows and tooling
Are able to learn quickly about transformers and other aspects of modern artificial intelligence
Strong candidates may also have experience with
Familiarity with modern ML and LLM model architectures
Familiarity with numerical representations and functions (RTL)
Familiarity with clocking and reset schemes (RTL/PD)
UVM or formal verification experience (DV)
Ability to program with Python or another scripting language
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single 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 in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or related field
- Familiarity with high-speed digital logic
- Exposure to ASIC or SoC design concepts
- Familiarity with SystemVerilog, UVM, or Python
- Familiarity with verification work and writing test benches
- Familiarity with physical design flows and tooling
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.
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