People Operations Generalist

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

As we scale, we're looking for a hands-on People Operations Generalist to own the day-to-day employee experience, from offer letter to last day, and build the systems that let it scale. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-paced, high-talent-density environments and would rather fix a broken process and build systems than route tickets.

What You'll Do

- Own the full employee lifecycle, from onboarding through transfers, leaves, and offboarding, so every new hire is productive in their first week

- Be the go-to partner for employees and managers on policy, benefits, and pay, and coach managers through performance conversations and team changes

- Run core People programs, including performance and feedback cycles, engagement surveys, and the follow-through that comes after them

- Keep us compliant with California and federal employment requirements, managing records, I-9s, and leaves in partnership with Legal

- Administer benefits, open enrollment, and relocation and housing programs, working directly with our broker and vendors

- Partner with Finance on payroll inputs, equity administration, and compensation changes, keeping data accurate across systems

- Own our HRIS and People tooling, automating repetitive work (including with AI tools) and writing documentation that lets people self-serve

Representative projects

- Employee recognition programs and culture initiatives (e.g. peer recognition, awards, public acknowledgements, team-building events, reinforcing company values)

- Performance management system implementation and Learning & Development programs

- HRIS implementation or optimization: implementing Rippling and building out an HR team to include in-house payroll and benefits administration

You may be a good fit if you have

- Demonstrated Expertise in Data-Driven Decision Making: Proven experience leveraging reporting and data analytics to inform and drive strategic people initiatives.

- Proficiency with Modern Workplace Tools: Strong working knowledge of collaboration and productivity tools, including Jira, Slack, Notion, and GSuite.

- Rippling HRIS Proficiency: Hands-on experience with the Rippling HRIS platform (or similar modern HR platforms).

- Adaptability in Startup Environments: Demonstrated success thriving in fast-paced, dynamic startup environments.

Strong candidates may also have experience with

- Proficiency in Strategic Compensation and Headcount Planning: Ability to actively contribute to compensation planning and headcount management initiatives.

- Proven HR Business Partnering (HRBP) Experience: Experience providing strategic HR guidance and support to managers and employees.

- Knowledge of Recruiting Operations: Familiarity with recruiting operations to support effective talent acquisition.

- Comprehensive Benefits Administration Skills: Experience managing and administering employee benefits programs.

Benefits

- Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with generous premium coverage

- Housing subsidy of $2,500/month for those living within walking distance of the office

- Daily lunch and dinner in our office

- Relocation support for those moving to West San Jose

Compensation Range

- $100,000 - $200,000

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html. 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 West San Jose, 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.