Prototype Engineering Lead

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 We are standing up an in-house prototyping division at our 80,000 square foot Milpitas facility: a quick-turn machine shop and sheet metal cell, a system assembly and integration area, and a prototype SMT line. The outcome you are hired to deliver is simple to state and hard to do: any Etched engineer can get a prototype part made with same-day or next-day turnaround. You own the entire outcome required to make that true — hiring, shop setup, process, and execution. Key Responsibilities - Own the end-to-end stand-up of the prototyping division: space planning, equipment selection and procurement, facility improvements, permits, and commissioning of the machine shop, sheet metal cell, assembly area, and prototype SMT line - Hire, lead, and develop a team of machinists, fabricators, and assembly technicians. - Run day-to-day operations against the division's core metric: same-day or next-day turnaround on prototype parts for engineering - Build the systems that make a shop run: work intake and prioritization, quoting, scheduling, traceability, inventory and vendor-managed consumables, and preventive maintenance - Own the division budget (capex and opex), make build-vs-buy calls, and manage relationships with machine dealers, riggers, and overflow vendors - Stand up quality infrastructure: first-article inspection, calibration program, cross-section/failure-analysis lab, and inspection criteria for incoming and in-process work - Partner daily with mechanical, electrical, and thermal engineering teams to close design-for