Test Design Engineer

Etched • San Jose, CA

2d • Onsite

About The Position

Etched is seeking a Test Design Engineer to own the end-to-end test strategy and test systems for its AI hardware, spanning silicon bring-up, boards, servers, and full racks, from early validation through production. The role is part of a small central team responsible for making testing reliable, repeatable, and scalable across domain teams including firmware, system software, inference, platform hardware, and silicon validation.

The engineer will define what the complete test strategy should cover at each stage, how tests are built, versioned, gated, and run as a unified system, and whether tests detect important defects and scale to production volume. The role includes reviewing domain-team test plans, developing regression gates, setting pass/fail and retest procedures, and leading cross-disciplinary failure triage. The position partners with Test Infrastructure and manufacturing partners to implement the strategy in production, including international travel to Taiwan.

Etched builds hardware for frontier intelligence, co-designing chips, racks, software, and manufacturing, with an initial focus on inference. The company describes itself as a fully in-person team based in San Jose (Santana Row), where technical staff are expected to work across engineering and research disciplines.

Requirements

• Have owned the test strategy or test systems for at least one hardware product from bring-up into production.
• Hands-on experience across low-level firmware, board-level, and system-level testing.
• Experience designing regression gating or CI for hardware and firmware.
• Strong debugging skills across hardware, firmware, and software, working from logs and lab tools.
• Clear communication across teams and comfort making coverage and risk tradeoffs explicit.
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or equivalent practical experience.
• Willingness to work onsite in San Jose and travel internationally to manufacturing partners.

Nice To Haves

• 8+ years in test engineering, test architecture, system validation, or test automation for hardware products.
• Experience with server, rack, GPU, or accelerator systems, including post-silicon bring-up and rack-level (L10/L11) integration testing.
• Experience with BMC, BIOS, PCIe, high-speed interconnects, and power and thermal validation.
• Experience with hardware-in-the-loop test systems.
• Factory test, test stations, or experience working with contract manufacturers and ODMs.
• Yield analysis and data-driven test optimization experience.
• Experience bringing first-generation hardware into production at a fast-paced startup.

Responsibilities

• Define and own the overall test strategy and coverage map across silicon, firmware, board, server, and rack levels, from EVT/DVT/PVT validation through production.
• Design test systems and frameworks, including how tests are structured, versioned, gated, and run across the lab and factory.
• Review domain-team test plans at each build phase, identify coverage gaps and unnecessary duplication, and balance coverage against test time.
• Build regression gating so firmware, driver, and test-package changes are validated on representative hardware before release.
• Define pass/fail criteria, retest policies, and diagnostics, and work with Production to turn them into clear procedures.
• Lead technical triage of failures spanning hardware, firmware, and software by analyzing logs, reproducing issues, isolating root causes, and driving corrective actions with domain engineers.
• Turn repeated failures into improved tests, upstream screening, and diagnostics.
• Partner with Test Infrastructure and manufacturing partners to bring the test strategy into production, including travel to Taiwan.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage.
• $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits.
• Housing subsidy of $2,500 per month for those living within walking distance of the office.
• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row).
• Wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more.
• Daily lunch and dinner in the office.
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time