Firmware Intern

Etched; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 20,000 - 36,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous housing support

Daily lunch and dinner

Direct mentorship

Paid internship

Job summary

A cutting-edge technology company in San Jose is offering a paid internship in firmware development. The role focuses on developing firmware for custom ASICs to run large transformer models efficiently. Ideal candidates are pursuing a degree in Computer Science or Engineering and have proficiency in C/C++ or Rust. You'll collaborate with various teams and have direct mentorship from industry leaders. Benefits include housing support for relocators and daily meals during the internship.

Qualifications

• Progress towards a degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• Proficiency in C/C++ or Rust.
• Strong understanding of low-level software engineering.

Responsibilities

• Develop firmware for custom ASICs designed for large transformer models.
• Collaborate with hardware and software teams.
• Validate features and support real-world AI applications.

Skills

C/C++ or Rust

Data structures and algorithms

Low-level software engineering

Hardware/software co-design

Communication and collaboration

Education

Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

Linux internals

Kernel development

Driver debugging

Server virtualization

CI/CD pipelines

Rust

Embedded development

Job description

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

In our firmware role, you will help develop firmware for custom ASICs designed to run large transformer 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.

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 (June - August 2026)
• 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 [e-mail]

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 (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 as needed.