Emulation Engineer, Hardware Prototyping (HAPS)
- Salary
- $150K - $350K
- Level
- Mid
- Work type
- On-site · San Jose
Not stated in the posting: visa.
Open. First seen 2 October 2026.
About the role
Etched's standard text
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.
What you'll do
- Own HAPS bring-up. Take RTL from the design teams and get it running on the prototype — partitioning, multi-FPGA timing closure, clocking, memory mapping, and full-chip assembly.
- Expand platform coverage. Stand up new subsystem configurations so more of the chip is available to software earlier. Each new partition you enable unblocks a team.
- Support your users. Firmware, driver, and software engineers are your customers. You'll help them get running, triage their failures, and figure out whether the bug is theirs, the RTL's, or the platform's.
- Debug hard problems. Trace issues across FPGA boundaries with waveform capture, protocol analyzers, and whatever tooling you have to build yourself.
- Bring up interfaces. PCIe, Ethernet, HBM and memory models, JTAG, I2C, UART, QSPI — both the models and the physical bridges.
- Build the flows. Automate builds, regressions, and image delivery so the platform scales past the number of people who understand it.
- Work across the org. Design, DV, Silicon Validation, Performance, Firmware, and Software — plus direct partnership with Synopsys on tool issues and platform capability.
Representative projects
- Bring up a new subsystem partition on HAPS and get firmware booting on it end to end.
- Build a self-service flow that lets software users load and run their own images without prototyping support in the loop.
- Instrument deep trace capture across partition boundaries and build the tooling that surfaces it usefully.
- Create configurable chip-to-chip and off-chip interface models using prototyping-efficient primitives.
- Close timing on a partition that doesn't want to close, and document how you did it so the next person doesn't have to rediscover it.
You may be a good fit if you have
- Hands-on FPGA prototyping experience — HAPS, Protium, proFPGA, S2C, or similar — covering partitioning, synthesis, timing closure, bring-up, and debug.
- Strong SystemVerilog and Verilog, with a working understanding of what synthesizes well for FPGA and what doesn't.
- Solid C/C++ and Linux system development.
- Scripting fluency for automation — Python, TCL, shell.
- Comfort debugging failures you didn't cause, in code you didn't write, for users who need an answer today.
Strong candidates may also have
- Experience with ProtoCompiler, Vivado, or Synopsys prototyping flows.
- Firmware, driver, or bootloader bring-up experience on pre-silicon platforms.
- Experience with emulation platforms (ZeBu, Palladium, Veloce) alongside prototyping — we run both, and the collateral is shared.
- UVM verification environments, DFT, and testbench modeling.
- Waveform debug tooling: Verdi, SimVision.
- Cluster and job scheduling experience (SLURM), CI systems.
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
Compensation Range
- $150,000 - $275,000
How we’re different
Etched's standard text
Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. 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.
What this role asks for
Particular to this role
FPGA · Verilog
Rare in Etched's other 103 open postings.
Standard for embedded / hardware roles
C++ · Embedded Systems · Python
Common in embedded / hardware postings at any company.
85% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Etched's standard text, folded away below.
Read against Etched's other open postings on this site.
The team: Software HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 34 open in Software. 11 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in November: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Linux (16 of 34), Python (15 of 34), Embedded Systems (13 of 34), C++ (12 of 34), Rust (12 of 34), LLM (10 of 34), C (9 of 34)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Internal Acceleration, Research Engineer (Production) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Research Engineer (Hardware) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Research Engineer (ASIC) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Engineer (Production) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Engineer (Hardware) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Engineer (ASIC) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Research Engineer (Kernels) posted Oct 15
- Internal Acceleration, Engineer (Kernels) posted Oct 15
- Applied Engineer, Hardware posted Oct 7
- Fleet Software Lead posted Oct 7
- Node Systems Lead posted Oct 7
- Network Security Engineer posted Jun 25
- Data Center Engineer posted Jun 25
- Security Engineer (Remote) posted Jun 22
- Chip Simulation Software Intern posted May 19
- Embedded Software Engineer posted May 19
- Firmware Engineer posted May 12
- Technical Program Manager, Infrastructure posted Apr 17
- IT Engineer posted Feb 19
- Developer Experience Engineer posted Feb 19
- Security Engineer posted Feb 18
- Firmware Intern posted Feb 7
- Infrastructure Software Engineer posted Jan 20
- Kernel Driver Software Engineer posted Jan 14
- Firmware Engineer (Taiwan) posted Oct 29
- Supercomputing Software Engineer (Taiwan) posted Oct 29
- Supercomputing Test Software Engineer (Taiwan) posted Oct 29
- Supercomputing Engineer, Fleet Software posted Jun 18
- Emulation Software Engineer posted Jan 31
- Inference Software Engineer posted Jan 16
- Senior Firmware Engineer posted Dec 4
- Firmware Engineer posted Dec 4
- Machine Learning Research Engineer posted Nov 13
From the team and dates on Etched's own job board.
Similar jobs
- Satellite Flight Software Engineer (Embedded Systems/SETA) at omniconsultcorp
Shares 7 skills: Verilog, FPGA, C… · same seniority · same country - Embedded Systems Engineer (Medical Devices) at Black Canyon Consulting
Shares 7 skills: Verilog, FPGA, C… · same seniority · same country - Effector Embedded Software Engineer at CHAOS Industries
Shares 7 skills: Verilog, FPGA, C… · same seniority · same country - FPGA RF Signal Processing Engineer at Muon Space
Shares 6 skills: Verilog, FPGA, C… · same seniority · same city - Senior Electrical Design Engineer at Humanoid
Shares 7 skills: Verilog, FPGA, C… · same country - Internal Acceleration, Engineer (Special Projects) at Etched
Also at this company
Is this your posting and you want it taken down? Email info@careerholo.com.