Etched · 4 days ago
Machine Learning Co-Design Researcher
San Jose, CA
Full-time
Onsite
Senior Level
$150K/yr - $275K/yrEtched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers, aiming to deliver superior performance and cost efficiency. The Machine Learning Co-Design Researcher will focus on optimizing transformer models and collaborating with hardware engineers to enhance system performance.
AI InfrastructureArtificial Intelligence (AI)ComputerHardwareSemiconductor
Responsibilities
Translate core mathematical operations from transformer models into optimized operation sequences for Sohu
Develop and leverage a deep understanding of Sohu to co-design both HW instructions and model architecture operations to maximize model performance
Implement high-performance software components for the Model Toolkit
Collaborate with hardware engineers to maximize chip utilization and minimize latency
Implement efficient batching strategies and execution plans for inference workloads
Design and implement cutting edge inference time compute scaling methods
Alter and fine-tune model architectures or inference time compute algorithms
Contribute to the evolution of our system architecture and programming model
Optimize operation sequences to maximize Sohu's computational resources for specific transformer architectures such as Llama 4
Research and implement efficient memory management for KV cache sharing and prefix optimization
Develop algorithms for continuous batching and batch interleaving to improve throughput and/or latency
Research and implement model-specific inference-time acceleration algorithms such as speculative decoding, tree search, KV cache sharing, priority scheduling, etc by interacting with the rest of the inference serving stack
Research and implement structured decoding and novel sampling algorithms for reasoning models
Qualification
Required
Co-design expertise across both SW and HW domains
Strong software engineering skills with systems programming experience
Deep knowledge of transformer model architectures and/or inference serving stacks (vLLM, SGLang, etc.)
Strong mathematical skills, esp. in linear algebra
Ability to reason about performance bottlenecks and optimization opportunities
Experience working cross-functionally in diverse software and hardware organizations
Preferred
Experience with hardware accelerators, ASICs, or FPGAs
Experience with Rust programming language
Deep expertise in ML systems engineering and hardware/software co-design with demonstrated impact (contributions to open-source projects or published papers)
Track record of optimizing large co-designed SW / HW systems
Benefits
Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with generous premium coverage
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 West San Jose
Company
Etched
Building the hardware for superintelligence
Founded in 2022
51-200 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Etched has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (9)
2024 (11)
2023 (1)
Funding
Current Stage
Growth StageTotal Funding
$625.36MKey Investors
StripesPrimary Venture Partners
2026-01-14Series Unknown· $500M
2024-06-25Series A· $120M
2023-05-16Seed· $5.36M
Leadership Team
Chris Zhu
Co-Founder
Robert Wachen
Co-Founder and President
Recent News
2026-01-16
Soma Capital
2026-01-07
Google Patent
2025-04-02
Company data provided by crunchbase