Security Engineer, Etched
More information about location
Office located in San Jose, CA
Designing specialised chips for language model inference
Be an early applicant
Designing specialised chips for language model inference
21-100 employees
Be an early applicant
More information about location
Office located in San Jose, CA
21-100 employees
Company mission
To create the world’s most powerful servers for transformer inference.
Role
Who you are
- If you are motivated by precision, ownership, and impact, you will find Etched the ideal place to advance your craft and contribute to the future of AI computing
- 5-7+ years of experience in security engineering, SOC operations, detection engineering, incident response, or a similar role that blends hands-on technical work with analytical problem solving
- Strong software engineering skills with Python, Go, Bash, (C and Rust a major plus), including the ability to design, implement, and maintain high-quality code, automation frameworks, services, and integrations that improve security, observability, and operational efficiency
- Proficiency with SIEM and SOAR platforms, including experience building detections, dashboards, and automated workflows
- Deep understanding of EDR and XDR platforms, endpoint security hardening, and telemetry collection across macOS, Linux, Windows, and server environments
- Experience implementing or supporting zero trust architectures, including conditional access, SASE, CASB, and identity-driven access control models
- Familiarity with IAM and SSO systems such as Okta, Google Workspace, and FreeIPA and the ability to design secure identity, access, and authentication policies
- Strong networking knowledge, including SDWAN, VPN, IDS and IPS, firewall administration, segmentation strategy, and monitoring of network traffic for anomalies
- Hands-on experience managing or building security telemetry pipelines, log ingestion frameworks, or observability systems that support both structured and unstructured data
- Solid understanding of threat modeling, the MITRE ATT and CK framework, attacker tradecraft, and common detection and response patterns
- Experience performing vulnerability assessments, penetration testing, or secure configuration reviews and collaborating with teams to remediate identified risks
- Exposure to cloud and hybrid environments such as AWS, GCP, or on-prem clusters and the ability to evaluate risks and implement protective controls across these environments
What the job involves
- At Etched, building and maintaining a secure yet friction-free computing environment is central to our mission. As a Security Engineer, you will protect the networks, systems, and applications that enable our engineers to push the limits of AI hardware
- You will design, implement, and operate the monitoring, detection, and response infrastructure that safeguards Etched’s intellectual property, high-performance compute clusters, and developer workflows across both on-prem and cloud environments
- You will partner with infrastructure, IT, application, and external provider teams to build systems that are secure by design, resilient under pressure, and seamless and easy to use for the end users
- This role combines hands-on technical depth with a focus on scalability and automation
- You will take ownership of Etched’s security posture across infrastructure, IT, and applications, driving proactive threat detection, real-time monitoring, and rapid incident response
- Your decisions will always balance maintaining full firm-wide velocity while improving our security and defense posture
- You will develop tools, automation, and workflows that evolve with our rapidly growing and expanding footprint and ensure that security enhances, rather than hinders, innovation
- Manage and harden security baselines across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud systems, ensuring strong protection while maintaining speed and usability
- Integrate telemetry, logging, tracing, and management of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data across the entire environment to provide unified and comprehensive observability into infrastructure and application activity
- Lead vulnerability management, patching, and configuration assurance programs to reduce exposure and maintain a consistent security posture
- Partner with infrastructure, IT, and application teams to strengthen identity, access, and network security through Okta, Google Workspace, and FreeIPA
- Implement and maintain zero-trust network architectures, SASE controls, CASB solutions, and conditional access policies that protect both users and data across environments to ensure full access and full control of our data and IP regardless of location or device
- Operate and enhance security operations tooling, including SIEM, SOAR, and EDR/XDR platforms, to ensure comprehensive monitoring and rapid detection of threats
- Develop and tune detection logic, automation, and playbooks for identifying and responding to threats such as insider activity, lateral movement, and anomalous behavior
- Investigate and respond to security incidents, performing root-cause analysis, containment, and remediation while coordinating with engineering and IT
- Build automation, scripts, AI agents, and integrations that streamline monitoring, alerting, and remediation workflows to improve efficiency and reliability
- Establish metrics, dashboards, and feedback mechanisms to measure detection coverage, response time, and overall security health
- Promote a culture of security awareness and ownership across engineering teams, ensuring that protection and productivity advance together
- Representative Projects:
- Implementing a centralized security telemetry pipeline that aggregates logs and signals from networks, compute clusters, storage, endpoints devices, build systems, and cloud services into a unified SIEM for improved detection coverage
- Designing and developing Security Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) workflows to automate repetitive tasks like alert triage, data gathering, and initial containment, which improves SOC efficiency
- Help build a secure and flexible end user access framework that uses SDWAN, SASE, CASB, conditional access, EDR and XDR, and MDM/MAM to support productive, friction-free and secure work from any location using different devices
- Network Security Monitoring: Configuring and monitoring network intrusion detection/prevention systems (IDS/IPS) and firewalls to detect anomalies in network traffic, especially on the SDWAN and client VPN links
- Creating and refining detailed, documented incident response plans and playbooks tailored to specific scenarios, such as a breach in a lab environment or a compromised silicon testing machine
- Conducting regular vulnerability assessments and penetration testing on internal systems and applications, then coordinating with relevant teams to manage and remediate identified weaknesses
Our take
With AI developing rapidly, the chips that power them are doing so too. The computing requirements of technologies such as Chat GPT will increasingly require customised, hard-wired chips called ASICS, designed specially for the execution of AI models. Whilst GPUs are currently used for AI computing, Etched is making a bet on AI-hardwired chips becoming the predominant powering force of AI.
It’s a gamble, the founders themselves know that if transformers become obsolete, so will their AI-powering product. The SOHU chip that Etched builds differs from GPUs in that it has the AI architecture etched into the chip itself. General Processing Units are “general” and costly, so Etched is betting on specialised transformers taking their place in the near future.
Investors are drawn to Etched’s boldness. The 2022-founded company achieved $120 million in Series A funding just two years into its life, and received a further $500 million at the start of 2026. Etched plans to use this to amp up its competition with GPU company Nvidia, and claims to be 20 times faster than the latter’s AI-powered general processor - and significantly less costly too. Time will tell if Etched’s exciting and potentially revolutionary bet on tailored AI chips and transformers pays off.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 3 rounds)
Jan 2026
$500m
LATE VC
Jun 2024
$120m
SERIES A
Total funding: $625.4m
Company benefits
- Competitive Salary and Equity - We offer a competitive salary and equity package that aligns with industry standards
- Benefits - Your wellbeing is important to us. We offer unlimited PTO, life insurance, and a 401(k)
- Full Insurance Coverage - Our insurance includes full medical, dental, and vision with 100% of premium covered
Company HQ
Horace Mann and SJSU, San Jose, CA
Leadership
Robert Wachen
(Co-Founder & President)Also the Co-Founder of Prod and Mentor Labs, Birthday Cakes 4 Free Maryland and Generate Sales Online.
Gavin Uberti
(Co-Founder & CEO)Previously Software Engineer at OctoML, Algorithms and BAckend Engineer at Coursedog and was a Software Engineer Intern at Xnor.ai.
Chris Zhu
(Co-Founder)Was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard and a Software Engineering Intern at Amazon and AvantStay. Was an Analyst at Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners.
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