Embedded Software Engineer

Job Title

Embedded Software Engineer

Role Summary

Owner of the accelerator software stack that makes Etched's chips usable. Work spans ASIC firmware, microcontroller platform firmware, and host-side kernel/drivers to bring the chip from power-on to a production-ready device.

Specialize in one of the three domains (ASIC software, platform microcontroller firmware, or host kernel/drivers) and contribute across the others as the team grows. This role is fully in-person in San Jose (Santana Row).

Experience Level

Mid-level. The posting does not state explicit years of experience; candidates are expected to have practical, production-facing embedded or firmware experience.

Responsibilities

Work across low-level firmware and host interfaces to initialize, manage, and expose accelerator devices.

• Design, implement, and debug firmware running on embedded CPUs inside the ASIC (bootloaders, initialization, IO drivers, DMA, thermal/power management).
• Develop microcontroller firmware for power sequencing, telemetry, and over-the-air firmware update workflows.
• Implement and maintain Linux kernel drivers and host-side interfaces (PCIe, memory management, ring-buffer command queues, SR-IOV VF device management).
• Collaborate with hardware engineers during schematic design and bring-up to validate and harden platform software.
• Validate and test software on hardware platforms; participate in system-level debugging and performance tuning.
• Contribute to design reviews, documentation, and cross-discipline engineering efforts.

Requirements

Core technical requirements and desirable skills. Degree details are summarized separately under Education Requirements.

Must-have

• Strong software development fundamentals, including data structures and algorithms.
• Experience shipping and testing software on products that have gone to production.
• Depth in firmware design, implementation, and debugging on embedded targets.
• Familiarity with embedded architectures and silicon-to-host IO technologies: ARM, PCIe, DMA, HBM, DRAM, Ethernet, UART.
• Knowledge of systems concepts such as scalability, fault tolerance, and consistency.

Nice-to-have

• Experience with hardware bring-up on a new chip or board.
• Experience using low-level computer-architecture details (caching, AXI fabrics) to optimize software at very low latencies.
• Ability to solve ambiguous, under-specified problems where requirements evolve with the solution.
• Strong communication skills for cross-discipline collaboration.

Education Requirements

Required: Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience. Preferred: Master’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent technical experience. The posting accepts equivalent practical experience in lieu of formal degrees; no specific certifications were listed.

About the Company

Company: Etched

Headquarters: San Jose, CA, United States

Etched develops purpose-built AI inference ASICs and systems optimized for transformer models, aiming to deliver significantly higher performance, lower cost, and lower latency than GPUs. The company focuses on enabling applications like real-time video generation and advanced reasoning agents, and is backed by leading investors and engineers.