Product Quality Engineer

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.

Etched is hiring a Quality Engineer based in the US to ensure robust quality systems across our suppliers, domestic contract manufacturing and integration partners (L10 server, L11 rack). You will own quality assurance for our advanced AI hardware builds—driving inspection and test strategies, resolving systemic issues, and ensuring that every system leaving the factory meets Etched’s standards for performance and reliability.

This role will collaborate closely with Manufacturing Operations, Supply Chain, and Test Engineering, serving as the bridge between Etched HQ and factory teams. It is ideal for someone who enjoys being hands-on in the factory, while also establishing the scalable quality processes needed to support high-volume production.

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  Lead quality assurance for overseas and US-based suppliers, contract manufacturers and integrators (semiconductor, PCBA, L10 servers, L11 racks).

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  Establish and maintain incoming, in-process, and outgoing inspection processes to ensure compliance with Etched standards.

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  Partner with Test Engineering to define system-level test coverage, burn-in protocols, and reliability validation.

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  Drive failure analysis, root-cause investigations, and corrective/preventive actions (8D, CAPA).

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  Track, analyze, and report on quality metrics (yield, defect density, escapes, DPPM) to both engineering and operations stakeholders.

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  Participate in ECO reviews, configuration changes, and NPI build reviews to enforce quality gates.

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  Conduct supplier audits and ensure adherence to industry standards (ISO/AS, IPC).

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  Collaborate with Manufacturing Operations to scale line capability, training, and documentation.

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  Champion continuous improvement projects across yield, throughput, and defect reduction.

• 5+ years of experience in quality engineering, supplier quality, or manufacturing quality roles in datacenter hardware, servers, or semiconductor-related systems.

• Proven track record working with Tier 1 overseas and/or US-based contract manufacturers and/or ODMs.

• Familiarity with server assembly, burn-in, and system-level test workflows.

• Strong knowledge of quality tools and methodologies (SPC, FMEA, control plans, DOE).

• Excellent cross-functional communication skills; ability to drive alignment across engineering, ops, and suppliers.

• Comfortable working on-site at CM factories and resolving issues in real time.

• Background in AI ASIC or high-performance compute hardware.

• Familiarity with the SMT and DIP process.

• Experience with L11 rack-level integration and validation.

• Exposure to thermal/power stress testing and system reliability engineering.

• Prior experience ramping high-complexity systems from NPI into MP.

• Engineering background in electrical, mechanical, or manufacturing domains.

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.