Join Etched as a Research Engineer to advance AI systems and automate engineering tasks in a fully in-person team.
Posted by employer 2 days ago
First seen on Joblaze 3 hours ago
Last verified on the company career page 3 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
What you'll build
- Own the post-training stack end to end
- Build RL environments with engineers
- Create custom data mixes
- Create benchmarks for productivity
Must have
- Hands-on post-training experience
- Strong PyTorch and distributed-training skills
- Experience with reinforcement learning frameworks
Nice to have
- Experience with RL or post-training frameworks
- Experience in ASIC design or verification
- Experience with distillation and training small models
AI in the day-to-day
Use proprietary simulators and environments to create custom data mixes and post-train models.
Not disclosed in this posting: years of experience, visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In the role of Research Engineer on the RL Frontiers team at Etched, the individual will focus on training proprietary models to enhance kernel development and hardware systems. Key skills include expertise in post-training techniques, particularly reinforcement learning, and proficiency in PyTorch and distributed training. This position is ideal for experienced engineers who have successfully improved model performance under constraints, particularly those with a background in applied AI or hardware design. Etched emphasizes a collaborative environment where engineering and research intersect, fostering a hands-on approach to innovation.
Joblaze insights
- Listed today — first seen on Joblaze October 23, 2026. Last confirmed on Etched's careers page October 23, 2026.
- Salary band is above the typical range for AI/ML roles (median ~$190,000).
- Starts above 97% of 64 comparable senior ai/ml roles in United States that list PyTorch we track (median $200,000 across 32 companies).
- PyTorch appears in 18.8% of 553 comparable senior ai/ml roles in United States; GRPO appears in 0.4% of 553 comparable senior ai/ml roles in United States.
Quick facts
- Is the Research Engineer, RL Frontiers role remote?
- No — this is an on-site role in San Jose, United States.
- What's the salary for this Research Engineer, RL Frontiers role?
- Etched lists a starting salary of $400,000.
- Where is the role based?
- Etched is hiring for this position in San Jose, United States.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: ASIC design, GRPO, PPO, PyTorch, SFT, distributed training.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Etched targets senior candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Research Engineer, RL Frontiers role at Etched.
From the original posting
Job Summary
Etched is building AI systems that accelerate its own development. As a Research Engineer on the RL Frontiers team, you will train our proprietary frontier models to automate kernel development, ASIC engineering, production pipelines, and 3-D hardware operating systems.
You will use our proprietary simulators and environments to create custom data mixes and post-train models to SOTA performance on our hardest engineering tasks.
Key Responsibilities
Own the post-training stack completely end to end.
Build RL environments with ASIC, kernel, and supercomputing engineers, rewarded by simulation, formal tools, tests, and hardware measurements.
Create custom data mixes that unlock frontier performance on relevant tasks.
Create benchmarks that drive real productivity in the models and avoid reward hacking
You may be a good fit if you
Have hands-on post-training experience, including SFT and RL (e.g., PPO, GRPO), and have shipped models people used.
Have taken a model from bad to good on a task it wasn’t built for, ideally with scarce data, for example as an early post-training hire at an applied AI company.
Are a strong PyTorch and distributed-training engineer who reads the rollouts and checks the numbers before trusting a result.
Understand the systems side of RL well enough to make the loop faster and cheaper, not just better.
Are entrepreneurial and make good calls under compute and data constraints. Former founders are a plus.
Strong candidates may also have experience with
RL or post-training frameworks (e.g., verl, OpenRLHF, TRL, prime-rl) or inference engines (vLLM, SGLang).
Agentic, multi-turn RL with verifiable rewards.
Distillation and training small, specialized models for production.
ASIC design or verification, accelerator kernels, or large-scale compute infrastructure.
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
Daily lunch and dinner in our office
Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification
Base Compensation Range
$400K+
Plus Significant Equity
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.
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.
Standard company text repeated across Etched's postings is omitted here.