Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer

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

As a Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer at Etched, you will own the mechanical manufacturing side of our AI systems, ensuring seamless product introduction from prototype through high-volume ramp. You will collaborate with hardware, electrical, ASIC, and reliability engineering teams to drive manufacturability, yield, and cost efficiency at scale. This role focuses on enclosure and system-level design-for-manufacturing (DFM), tooling and fixture readiness, mechanical bring-up/debug, and sustaining improvements across the full product lifecycle.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead manufacturing readiness for new product introductions (NPI) and sustaining engineering activities at board and system level.
• Drive DFM (Design for Manufacturability) and DFT (Design for Test) for PCBAs and electrical subsystems to ensure robust, scalable, and cost-effective production.
• Collaborate with suppliers to ensure process capability and yield targets are met.
• Identify and resolve yield issues during ramp and mass production.
• Perform failure analysis and root cause investigations for electrical issues.
• Analyze production data to improve quality, cost, and cycle time.
• Travel domestically and internationally to support manufacturing builds.
• Review and influence Process FMEA and Design FMEA, providing diagnostics input.
• Develop, release, and maintain product documentation across the lifecycle.
• Provide leadership in complex issue resolution and drive defect/yield improvement Initiatives.
• Drive concise, timely communication to Cross-functional Etched peers as well as external supplier/partners.
• Support build activities on-site across CMs and vendors.
• Plan capacity and drive factory equipment budgeting activities.
• Develop and refine throughput models to ensure production meets current and future forecasted demand with optimal resource utilization.
• Partner with ODM or EMS engineers to architect an end-to-end balanced production line flow and throughput models to meet capacity scaling needs.
• As L10/11 Manufacturing process SME, create/release L10/11 assembly tooling, SOP’s, and process documentation working with Operations and Engineering teams.
• Host regularly recurring factory manufacturing and process execution calls to monitor and manage key objectives.
• Identify manufacturing risks and develop/execute risk management plans including but not limited to work arounds.
• Oversee onboarding, production ramp-up, and engineering performance management of external partners.
• Ensure manufacturing factory readiness by driving equipment and assembly station deployment with goal of best–in-class manufacturing processes.
• Monitor yields, throughput, and quality metrics; drive issue resolution with engineering and supplier quality teams with our quality team.
• Evaluate CM and vendor readiness with regular audits and recurring reviews for quality Improvement with our supply chain team.

You may be a good fit if you have

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in manufacturing, product, or electrical engineering.
• Strong knowledge of system hardware architectures and PCB fabrication/assembly processes.
• Proven ability to work across NPI and sustaining environments, from proto bring-up to ramp.
• Strong problem-solving skills with focus on yield, manufacturability, and cost optimization.
• Collaborative mindset to work effectively with cross-functional teams and suppliers.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefit package with competitive pay and equity.
• US onboarding experience in our HQ in Silicon Valley.

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.