People Operations

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.

Job Summary

The People Operations team architects and maintains the people systems, operating rhythms, and org design at Etched. You’ll lead payroll operations, HR systems, compliance, employee records, and workflow automation while building scalable processes that support rapid growth. You’ll partner closely with Finance, Legal, IT, and leadership to ensure our people infrastructure is accurate, efficient, and built to scale.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys building systems, improving processes, and making operations run exceptionally well.

Key responsibilities

• People Systems: Own Rippling and other People systems, including configuration, integrations, permissions, workflow automation, and ongoing optimization. Lead implementation of new People tools and ensure data integrity across all systems.

• Payroll & Benefits Operations: Own payroll operations and partner with Finance to ensure timely and accurate payroll processing. Administer benefits programs, manage vendors, and resolve payroll, benefits, and HR operational inquiries.

• Compliance Operations: Own HR operational compliance, including employee records, contractor administration, required notices, and audits. Partner with Legal to implement regulatory changes and maintain compliant processes.

• People Analytics – Build dynamic dashboards to visualize and understand the employee lifecycle. Use data to understand performance patterns and org health.

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

• A process-oriented mindset, with a track record of building systems that scale without requiring constant maintenance.

• A commitment to operational excellence, shaped by experience in high-ownership, high-pressure environments such as finance, consulting, or fast-growing startups.

• Strong strategic thinking skills, with an understanding of how talent decisions directly connect to business outcomes.

• A highly organized and detail-oriented approach — nothing slips through the cracks under your watch.

• Comfort working with data and building live dashboards and reports to drive clarity and decision-making.

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to engage and collaborate effectively at all levels of the organization.

• A high sense of ownership — you instinctively take initiative and tackle problems head-on.

Strong candidates may also have experience with (Nice-to-have qualifications)

• HR tools such as HRIS systems (e.g., Rippling), payroll platforms, or compliance solutions.

• Employment law, immigration, or cross-border employment issues.

• The AI ecosystem, semiconductors, or other complex technical products.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage

  • $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits

• Housing subsidy of $2k 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

• $125,000 – $175,000

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. 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.