Optical Engineering - Design/Analysis

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. Etched is looking for an exceptional Optical Systems Engineer to join our team. In this role, you will own the definition and implementation of the optical interconnect architecture for our next-generation accelerator systems and help us scale our manufacturing capabilities.

Partner with Signal Integrity, PCB, ASIC, Thermal, and Mechanical Engineering teams to implement electrical-optical interfaces in high-performance AI servers

Capture multi-rack interconnect requirements including topology, reach, connectors, and fiber management to ensure our products meet them

Define optical bring-up strategies and equipment while supporting test development for high-volume manufacturing

Own optics-related documentation, including AVLs, fiber/cable BOMs, serviceability guidelines, and assembly procedures

Strong fundamentals in optical link engineering, including link-budget analysis, IL/RL, OSNR, eye diagrams, jitter, BER, and FEC margining

• Deep familiarity with photonic-electronic co-design and advanced packaging methods, such as fiber-attach (edge couplers, grating couplers, V-groove FAUs, detachable optical connectors), optical interposers, and 2.5D/3D heterogeneous integration
• Proven track record of bringing up optical links and PIC-based subsystems alongside silicon, including root-cause debugging with PIC foundries, ELS vendors, and OSATs
• 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)

Daily lunch and dinner in our office

We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. We are a fully in-person team in San Jose and Taipei, and greatly value engineering skills.