Validation Engineer Jobs in San Ramon, CA (NOW HIRING)

About Etched

Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers - delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, you can build products that would be impossible with GPUs, like real-time video generation models and extremely deep & parallel chain-of-thought reasoning agents. 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

We are looking for a Power Validation Engineer to own the end-to-end power characterization of our ASIC and the mezzanine card platform — from early silicon bring-up through production qualification. You will design measurement methodology, build test benches, and drive findings directly into silicon, package, and system design decisions.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and execute power measurement campaigns across all voltage rails (VDD_CORE, HBM, PCIe, AUX, etc) under realistic LLM inference and power virus workloads; characterize peak, sustained, and idle power envelopes across PVT corners and define derating curves used in system thermal and PDN specs

• Validate power delivery network (PDN) performance — VRM load step response, PCIe power compliance, PDN impedance — and translate measurements into actionable feedback on capacitor placement, plane geometry, and de-cap strategy for PCB and package design teams

• Profile power transient events (ramp rates, droop amplitudes, recovery profiles) and correlate them with on-die performance monitor data; build automated power sweep frameworks exercising the full inference workload space across model sizes, batch sizes, sequence lengths, and precision modes

• Run extended stress workloads (72 h+ continuous) to surface reliability risks and throttling behavior; instrument multi-zone thermal profiles and support our overseas partners with SLT, production and debugging.

• Validate power sequencing, PMBus telemetry accuracy, and BMC alert thresholds across cold-start, hot-restart, and fault-injection scenarios; own power-related pass/fail criteria across FAT, SFT, and RIN qualification stages

• Feed characterization data back to RTL and physical design teams as input for DVFS policy, clock gating coverage, and leakage optimization; write precise validation reports that enable silicon and firmware teams to act without re-running experiments

• Lead the electrical characterization, validation, and qualification process for the on-board system-level power distribution network, spanning from power converter design to ASIC power integrity validation.

• Provide critical support to design engineers through debug, component validation, and failure analysis for released products, independently troubleshooting and determining the root cause of electrical component defects and design flaws.

• Develop and implement automated/scripted test procedures for the general qualification and testing of Devices Under Test (DUTs) as part of a comprehensive automation suite.

• Collect, analyze, and aggregate test data to support data-driven engineering decisions, generate reports on findings, reduce data sets, and thoroughly investigate test outcomes down to the hardware interface or component level.

• Collaborate with hardware designers and diagnostics development teams to understand new project architectures and system components, ensuring the necessary support for testing and debug efforts is implemented.

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

• A Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related field. Advanced degrees or certifications in power electronics or related areas are a plus

• Deep understanding of ASIC and system-level power delivery — VRM topology, PDN impedance, decoupling strategy, and transient response — with hands-on bench experience using precision shunts, isolated differential probes, and VNA-based PDN impedance measurement

• Expertise with multi-phase solutions with high dynamic content and low tolerance.

• Experience with VR tuning to a well defined power test plan to ensure VR specifications meet CPU/ ASIC

• Demonstrated ability to design experiments that isolate root cause in a complex hardware-software stack, strong oscilloscope and lab instrument fluency (triggering on rare transient events, correlating multi-channel captures), and a track record of finding bugs that only surface under specific workload or environmental conditions

• Relevant experience with Silicon bring ups

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

• Masters Degree in Power Electronics

• Experience with high voltage testing (800V and higher)

• Prior power validation work on AI accelerators, GPUs, or high-performance server platforms, including HBM power characterization or memory power management interfaces

• Experience with OpenBMC, IPMI, or custom BMC firmware for sensor monitoring and power capping; familiarity with LLM inference stacks (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, or similar) sufficient to construct representative power workloads

• Proficiency in Python for test automation, data pipeline construction, and statistical analysis; experience debugging across the stack from PMBus register dumps and BMC sensor logs to firmware traces and Linux kernel power management

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

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We think most of the progress in the AI field has come from using more FLOPs to train and run models, and the best way to get more FLOPs is to build model-specific hardware. Larger and larger training runs encourage companies to consolidate around fewer model architectures, which creates a market for single-model ASICs.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose and Taipei, 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 as needed.