Manufacturing Engineering Lead, SMT

About Etched

Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers - delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and 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. 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

We are hiring a Manufacturing Engineering Lead, SMT, to drive fabrication excellence across complex, high-performance hardware systems. In this role, you will operate at the intersection of PCBA design and fabrication, ensuring world-class quality, yield, reliability, and scalability.

You will collaborate closely with electrical engineers, PCBA layout designers, and fabrication partners to influence designs from early architecture through mass production. This role requires deep technical expertise in multilayer PCBA fabrication processes, strong cross-functional leadership, and rigorous execution to ensure manufacturability and long-term platform success.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive PCBA DFM for high-speed multilayer boards

• Partner with EE and layout teams to ensure manufacturability, yield optimization, and cost efficiency early in the design cycle

• Develop and enforce PCBA design guidelines aligned with supplier process capabilities

• Collaborate with PCB DFM team to review and optimize stack-ups, material selection, controlled impedance structures, via strategies (blind/buried/microvia), copper balancing, and panelization

• Lead SMT process development and qualification at contract manufacturer (CM)

• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to enhance fabrication yield, reliability, and cost structure

• Lead failure analysis (FA) for fabrication-related defects and implement corrective actions

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

• Experience supporting L6–L11 data center compute platforms, HPC systems, or high-layer-count server motherboards and accelerator PCBAs

• Strong understanding of SI/PI-driven fabrication constraints, including high-speed channel routing, low-loss material selection, copper roughness impact, and power delivery integrity

• Experience driving comprehensive PCBA DFM reviews covering stack-ups, drill structures, annular ring design, aspect ratios, copper balancing, panelization strategy, and fabrication tolerances

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 and dinner in our office

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 San Jose and Taipei, 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.