Manufacturing Design Program Manager

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

Etched is seeking a Manufacturing Design Program Manager to drive technical manufacturing readiness across new product introduction and mass production for our transformer-specific AI systems. This highly cross-functional individual contributor role sits at the intersection of design engineering, test engineering, SMT, FATP, supply chain, and operations. You will lead manufacturing execution from early design-for-manufacturing (DFM) reviews through production ramp, ensuring products are designed for manufacturability and successfully transitioned into high-volume production.

Key Responsibilities

• Drive manufacturing technical readiness across NPI and mass production in close partnership with hardware design, test engineering, SMT engineering, FATP process engineering, supply chain, and operations teams.
• Lead DFM reviews across L6, L10, and L11 assemblies, identifying manufacturability risks, integration challenges, and process constraints early in the product development cycle.
• Own manufacturing readiness for assigned programs, tracking build readiness, factory execution, process capability, yield, schedule, and key manufacturing risks.
• Coordinate cross-functional execution across prototype, EVT, DVT, PVT, and production builds, ensuring manufacturing deliverables remain on schedule.
• Partner with contract manufacturers and supply chain teams to develop production plans, line bring-up schedules, tooling readiness, and factory ramp strategies.
• Drive issue resolution during engineering and production builds through structured root cause analysis and cross-functional coordination.
• Monitor manufacturing KPIs including yield, cycle time, quality, and factory readiness while driving continuous improvement initiatives.
• Prepare and communicate manufacturing status, risks, mitigation plans, and execution updates to engineering leadership and executive stakeholders.
• Partner closely with design engineering to ensure manufacturing considerations are incorporated throughout the product development lifecycle.
• Travel to domestic and international manufacturing partners as needed to support production readiness and critical builds.

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

• 7+ years of experience in hardware engineering, with experience transitioning into Technical Program Management, Design Program Management, or Manufacturing Program Management.
• Strong preference for candidates with a background in mechanical, electrical, systems, or manufacturing engineering who have led cross-functional hardware programs through NPI and production.
• Experience managing manufacturing readiness for complex electromechanical systems or high-performance compute hardware.
• Strong understanding of manufacturing development phases including EVT, DVT, PVT, and production ramp.
• Experience leading DFM reviews and partnering closely with hardware engineering throughout product development.
• Experience working directly with contract manufacturers, FATP partners, or ODM/OEM manufacturing operations.
• Excellent cross-functional program management skills with the ability to coordinate engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and operations teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with experience driving manufacturing issue resolution.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including presenting program status, risks, and tradeoffs to senior leadership.
• Willingness to work in-person from our San Jose office and travel internationally to manufacturing partners as needed.

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

Experience building AI servers, accelerator systems, networking hardware, storage systems, or other high-performance compute platforms.

Familiarity with SMT manufacturing, factory operations, automated test systems, or final system integration.

Experience with manufacturing yield analytics, SPC methodologies, process capability metrics, or manufacturing data systems.

Experience with liquid-cooled systems, advanced packaging, or high-density compute platforms.

Experience partnering closely with ASIC, systems, thermal, reliability, or validation engineering teams.

Experience working in fast-paced startup environments bringing first-generation hardware products into production.

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 http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html. 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.