Head of Supercomputing

The Consensus; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 520,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision packages

Housing subsidy near Santana Row

Relocation support to San Jose

Wellness benefits

Daily lunch and dinner in office

Unlimited compute budget

Job summary

Etched, building at-scale AI inference supercomputers powered by its own chips, is seeking a Head of Supercomputing to define and lead the architecture, software stack, and operational model for cluster-scale AI compute systems.

This leader will own the end-to-end system software and control-plane strategy—from orchestration, telemetry, provisioning, networking, to fleet reliability—working with ASIC, hardware, kernel, runtime, and infrastructure teams to deliver the highest-performance

Qualifications

• 15+ years in system software or large-scale compute design.
• 5+ years leading engineering teams.
• Deep understanding of hardware/software interfaces (PCIe, RDMA).
• Experience building or operating cluster-scale AI infrastructure.
• Proven ability to deliver complex systems from bring-up to production.
• Strong leadership and cross-functional collaboration.

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 15+ engineers with a variety of experience levels.
• Architect and own 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 with firmware, drivers, kernel subsystems, and runtime layers.
• Establish system telemetry and observability infrastructure for customers.
• 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.
• Recruit, mentor, and retain exceptional systems engineers and engineering leaders.
• Act as a senior technical voice shaping company-wide infrastructure decisions.

Skills

System software leadership

Large-scale compute systems

Hardware/software interfaces

Team leadership

HPC/AI infrastructure

PCIe/RDMA knowledge

Debugging HW-SW

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

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 15+ engineers with a variety of experience levels
• Architect and own 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
• 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
• Recruit, mentor, and retain exceptional systems engineers and engineering leaders
• Act as a senior technical voice shaping company-wide infrastructure decisions

Must-Have Skills and Experience

• 15+ years of experience in system software, infrastructure, or large-scale compute systems, including 5+ years leading engineering teams
• Strong understanding of hardware/software interfaces such as PCIe, RDMA, memory hierarchies, interrupts, and device drivers
• 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

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 + dinner in our office
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

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.