Inference Software Engineer

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.

Key responsibilities

• Contribute to the architecture and design of the Sohu host software stack
• Implement high-performance, modular code across the complete Etched software stack, consisting of a mix of Rust, C++ and Python.
• Interface with firmware and drivers teams delivering highest-performance HW/SW stack.
• Work with AI model researchers and product-facing teams building out the Etched serving front-end.

Representative projects

• Build scheduling logic for handling continuous batching and real time inference
• Implement inference-time acceleration techniques such as speculative decoding, tree search, KV cache sharing, etc.
• Implement distributed networking primitives for efficient multi-server inference

You may be a good fit if you have

• Experience with C++ and Python
• Familiarity with transformer model architectures and inference serving stacks (vLLM, SGLang, etc.) or experience working in distributed inference/training environments
• Experience working cross-functionally in large software and hardware organizations

Strong candidates may also have

• Experience with Rust
• Familiarity with GPU kernels, the CUDA compilation stack and related tools, or other hardware accelerators
• Understanding of distributed systems, networking, and parallel programming

Benefits

• Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with 100% of premium covered
• 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 Cupertino

How we’re different

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