Performance Modeling Engineer

About the role

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.

Key responsibilities

- Develop comprehensive performance models and projections for our architecture across varying workloads and configurations

- Profile and analyze deep learning workloads on our hardware to identify micro-architectural bottlenecks and influence optimization opportunities

- Drive hardware/software co-optimization by identifying where architectural features can unlock performance improvements

- Run regressions and validate performance models against real systems and silicon

- Inform next-generation architectural decisions by pathfinding across system and silicon options during design, proof-of-concept, and architecting phases

You may be a good fit if you have at least one of the following:

- Strong performance modeling and analysis skills with experience building analytical-based or simulation-based performance models

- Solid understanding of computer architecture and micro-architecture, particularly for accelerators

- Experience profiling and analyzing deep learning workloads on hardware accelerators (GPUs, TPUs, ASICs, FPGAs, or others)

- Solid software engineering fundamentals with an eye toward auditability and maintainability

Strong candidates may also have

- Deep knowledge of GPU architectures and/or programming models like CUDA

- Experience mapping models to multi-chip inference systems

- Familiarity with transformer model architectures and inference serving optimizations

- Experience with architecture simulators and performance modeling tools (gem5, trace-driven simulators, custom models)

- Exposure to ASIC, FPGA, or CGRA-based accelerator development and hardware/software co-design principles

- Published research in computer architecture, ML systems, or hardware acceleration

Benefits

- Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage - $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

- Housing subsidy of $2.5k 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 + dinner in our office

- Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.