Equipment Technician – SMT Process & Maintenance

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.

We are seeking an Equipment Technician to maintain, troubleshoot, and support our Surface Mount Technology (SMT) production equipment. This hands-on role combines equipment maintenance with day-to-day process support to improve uptime, product quality, and manufacturing efficiency.

You will work closely with Production, Process Engineering, and Quality to resolve equipment issues, support product changeovers and new product introductions, and prevent recurring failures. The ideal candidate brings practical troubleshooting skills, experience with automated manufacturing equipment, and a disciplined approach to safe, reliable production.

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• A technical certificate, diploma, apprenticeship, or equivalent practical experience in electronics, electrical engineering, mechatronics, automation, or a related discipline.

• Hands-on experience maintaining or troubleshooting SMT equipment or comparable automated manufacturing equipment.

• Working knowledge of SMT assembly processes and common production defects.

• The ability to read equipment manuals, electrical schematics, and mechanical drawings and use diagnostic tools and test equipment effectively.

• Strong attention to detail, including the ability to follow procedures, document work accurately, and prioritize production support needs.

• Good communication skills and the ability to work independently and collaboratively with Production, Engineering, and Quality.

• The ability to perform hands-on maintenance involving standing, reaching, and accessing equipment, with reasonable accommodations as applicable, and availability for occasional overtime or weekend support.

• Three or more years of SMT equipment maintenance or process support.

• Equipment from Fuji, Heller, Koh Young, or Omron.

• IPC-A-610 acceptance criteria and J-STD-001 requirements.

• Maintenance management systems, root cause analysis, and equipment performance metrics.

• PLC diagnostics, servo systems, industrial networks, or machine vision.

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.