Performance Engineer

Etched • San Jose, CA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers, aiming to deliver over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, the company enables products 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 focused on redefining the infrastructure layer for the fastest growing industry in history. The company believes in the Bitter Lesson, emphasizing that most progress in AI comes from using more FLOPs, which is best achieved through model-specific hardware. This approach encourages consolidation around fewer model architectures, creating a market for single-model ASICs. Etched operates as a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), valuing engineering skills and expecting all technical staff to contribute to both engineering and research.

Requirements

• Deep expertise in computer architecture and micro-architecture, particularly for accelerators or domain-specific architectures
• Strong performance modeling and analysis skills with experience building analytical or simulation-based performance models
• Experience profiling and optimizing deep learning workloads on hardware accelerators (GPUs, TPUs, ASICs, FPGAs)
• Strong understanding of hardware/software co-design principles and cross-layer optimization
• Solid foundation in digital circuit design and how micro-architectural decisions impact performance
• Experience with reconfigurable or heterogeneous architectures
• Ability to reason quantitatively about performance bottlenecks across the full stack from circuits to workloads

Nice To Haves

• PhD or equivalent research experience in Computer Architecture or related fields
• Experience with ASIC, FPGA, or CGRA-based accelerator development
• Published research in computer architecture, ML systems, or hardware acceleration
• Deep knowledge of GPU architectures and CUDA programming model
• Experience with architecture simulators and performance modeling tools (gem5, trace-driven simulators, custom models)
• Track record of informing architectural decisions through rigorous performance analysis
• Familiarity with transformer model architectures and inference serving optimizations

Responsibilities

• Develop comprehensive performance models and projections for Sohu's transformer-specific architecture across varying workloads and configurations
• Profile and analyze deep learning workloads on Sohu to identify micro-architectural bottlenecks and optimization opportunities
• Build analytical and simulation-based models to predict performance under different architectural configurations and design trade-offs
• Collaborate with hardware architects to inform micro-architectural decisions based on workload characteristics and performance analysis
• Drive hardware/software co-optimization by identifying opportunities where architectural features can unlock significant performance improvements
• Characterize and optimize memory hierarchy performance, interconnect utilization, and compute resource efficiency
• Develop performance benchmarking frameworks and methodologies specific to transformer inference workloads
• Build detailed roofline models and performance projections for Sohu across diverse transformer architectures (Llama, Mixtral, etc.)
• Profile production inference workloads to identify and eliminate micro-architectural bottlenecks
• Analyze memory bandwidth, compute utilization, and interconnect performance to guide next-generation architecture decisions
• Develop performance modeling tools that predict chip behavior across different batch sizes, sequence lengths, and model configurations
• Characterize the performance impact of architectural features like specialized datapaths, memory hierarchies, and on-chip interconnects
• Compare Sohu's architectural efficiency against conventional GPU architectures through detailed bottleneck analysis
• Inform hardware design decisions for future generations (next gen and beyond) based on workload analysis and performance projections

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 + dinner in our office

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed