Forward Deployment Engineer - San Jose, United States
$208,000 - $300,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 23 October 2026 by the employer.
Lead deployment, bring-up, and validation of accelerator-based systems in datacenter environments.
About the role
Etched is seeking a Forward Deployment Engineer in San Jose, CA to lead end-to-end deployment of accelerator-based systems in large-scale datacenter environments. The role involves bring-up, validation, and debugging across hardware, firmware, Linux OS, and high-speed networking stacks.
What you'll do
- Lead end-to-end deployment of accelerator-based systems in large-scale datacenter environments, including installation, bring-up, validation, and customer acceptance. - Diagnose and resolve system-level issues across hardware, firmware, Linux OS, drivers, and high-speed networking stacks, including TCP/IP, RDMA, and 100GbE/400GbE infrastructure. - Perform root-cause analysis of field failures, reproduce issues with internal engineering teams, and drive corrective actions, patches, or design improvements. - Develop and maintain deployment tooling, diagnostics, telemetry, dashboards, and structured runbooks to improve system reliability, observability, and repeatability. - Coordinate firmware updates, configuration changes, and hotfix rollouts with minimal downtime across hardware, software, deployment, RMA, and sustaining engineering teams.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, Information Technology, Network Engineering, or a closely related field, plus 3 years of experience. - 3 years of experience in schematic review, PCB layout validation, and debugging of high-speed digital interfaces, including PCIe, SerDes, and memory subsystems. - 3 years of experience working with Linux-based systems for bring-up, validation, and debugging, with documentation through validation reports and technical documentation. - 3 years of programming experience in C/C++ and Python for hardware validation and debugging workflows. - 3 years of experience with power architecture design, troubleshooting, and power distribution networks. - 1.25 years of experience with system bring-up, validation, and debug of datacenter-class and HPC server platforms (such as NVIDIA HGX / GB systems). - Willingness to travel up to 30% domestically and internationally.
Skills: datacenter, system bring-up, PCIe, SerDes, accelerator
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 51-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1017
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$154k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Etched | All employers we track in this specialty (1017 roles · 102 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 10 | 1017 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 42 | 6295 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 127 d | 51 d (+76 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $154k |
Skills observed across this category: datacenter, system bring-up, PCIe, SerDes, accelerator
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 75 open roles · median 36 d
- KLA Corporation · 63 open roles · median 50 d
- Teradyne · 61 open roles · median 36 d
- NVIDIA · 51 open roles · median 68 d
- Applied Materials · 48 open roles · median 67 d
- AMD · 43 open roles · median 53 d
How we counted: 1017 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 102 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 24 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.