People Strategy & Operations

About Etched

Etched is building AI chips that are hard-coded for individual model architectures. Our first product (Sohu) only supports transformers, but has an order of magnitude more throughput and lower 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.

Job Summary

The People Strategy & Operations team architects and maintains the people systems, operating rhythms, and org design at Etched. You'll work directly with leadership to figure out how we organize, develop, and retain the best people as we rapidly scale in one of the world’s most important industries.

You'll own everything from org design and performance systems to people analytics and company culture. People are our most important asset at Etched: you'll learn how great startups are built, own important strategic people initiatives, and help drive some of the most critical decisions and workflows that determine how we organize and scale the business.

Key responsibilities

• Org Design - Structure teams and reporting lines as we scale. Design operating rhythms and processes that keep us moving efficiently without adding org bloat.

• People Systems - Build world-class onboarding and offboarding processes. Create performance management systems and compensation frameworks.

• People Analytics - Build dynamic dashboards to visualize and understand the employee lifecycle. Use data to understand performance patterns and org health.

• Operations - Own payroll, benefits, and compliance. Work with legal and vendors to stay ahead of regulatory requirements. Keep people data accurate across all systems.

You may be a good fit if you have

• A process-oriented mindset, with a track record of building systems that scale without requiring constant maintenance.

• A commitment to operational excellence, shaped by experience in high-ownership, high-pressure environments such as finance, consulting, or fast-growing startups.

• Strong strategic thinking skills, with an understanding of how talent decisions directly connect to business outcomes.

• A highly organized and detail-oriented approach — nothing slips through the cracks under your watch.

• Comfort working with data and building live dashboards and reports to drive clarity and decision-making.

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to engage and collaborate effectively at all levels of the organization.

• A high sense of ownership — you instinctively take initiative and tackle problems head-on.

Strong candidates may also have experience with

• The AI ecosystem, semiconductors, or other complex technical products.

• HR tools such as HRIS systems (e.g., Rippling), payroll platforms, or compliance solutions.

• Employment law, immigration, or cross-border employment issues.

Base Compensation Range

• $110,000 - $155,000

Benefits

• Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with generous premium coverage

• Housing subsidy of $2,000/month for those living within walking distance of the office

• Daily lunch and dinner in our office

• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)

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.