Thermal Lab Lead

About Etched

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.

Job Summary

We are seeking a highly motivated person to join our team as Thermal Lab Lead where you will help build and maintain a world class thermal lab to support the testing of all the thermal assemblies of our high-performance data center products. You will play a key role in the development lifecycle of Etched products, interfacing with engineers and enabling the testing and validation of cutting edge thermal designs. You will also work closely with lab operations on future lab build outs and deployment of CDUs and liquid cooled racks. You will interface with thermal technicians, plan, and delegate tests to meet aggressive timelines. This position requires very high hands-on ownership, attention to detail, and excellent organizational skills to support continuous high speed growth.

Key responsibilities

• Lead day-to-day thermal lab operations, including test benches, equipment, and consumables inventory.

• Develop test plans and procedures in partnership with thermal engineering.

• Own test setup, instrumentation, execution, data-quality review, and reporting against agreed objectives and acceptance criteria.

• Develop, maintain, and validate automation tools for test execution, data acquisition, and data reduction and analysis.

• Coordinate testing requests across multiple teams, establish priorities with stakeholders, and forecast equipment, capacity, and staffing bottlenecks.

• Lead thermal technicians, assign testing activities, provide technical guidance, and review completed work.

• Maintain lab procedures and coordinate equipment maintenance, calibration, and safe operating practices with lab operations.

• Partner with lab operations to plan future lab capabilities, equipment, and infrastructure.

• Assist with the installation, integration, and commissioning of primary and secondary cooling loops in partnership with facilities, lab operations, equipment vendors, and qualified contractors.

• Assemble thermal test vehicles, including wiring and soldering of PCBs and heaters.

• Commission CDUs and liquid-cooled racks to support lab testing.

• Assist in the design and buildout of Etched thermal labs in Taiwan.

You may be a good fit if you have

• Relevant technical education—such as an associate’s degree, technical diploma, or bachelor’s degree in engineering, engineering technology, mechatronics, instrumentation, or a related field—or equivalent hands-on experience.

• Hands-on experience testing single-phase liquid-cooled assemblies, including cold plates, manifolds, quick disconnects, and CDUs.

• Experience selecting, installing, and troubleshooting instrumentation such as flowmeters, thermocouples, and pressure transducers, as well as operating chillers and liquid-cooling test equipment.

• Demonstrated ability to independently build and troubleshoot test setups, assess measurement quality, and document reliable results.

• Working knowledge of heat transfer and fluid flow sufficient to interpret test results and troubleshoot thermal-fluid systems.

• Experience developing, debugging, and validating test automation and data-analysis workflows.

• Experience coordinating competing testing priorities and providing technical direction to technicians.

• Excellent organizational and documentation skills.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

  • $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

• Housing subsidy of $2,500 per month for those living within walking distance of the office

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

• Various wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more

• Daily lunch and dinner in our office

• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

How we’re different

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.