Node Systems Lead - San Jose, United States
Originally posted 7 October 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role involves leading the Node Systems team, which builds the software enabling Etched to deploy inference clusters. The team owns the software layer of individual Etched nodes, from host software and system configuration to rack component interfaces.
What you'll do
- Lead and develop the Node Systems team, setting priorities and assigning ownership.
- Set the technical direction for host software, system configuration, and rack component interfaces.
- Guide the team's performance work across CPU scheduling, memory, networking, and host-to-accelerator communication.
- Ensure system optimizations become tested, maintainable software and configurations for deployment.
- Lead the development of rack simulation and diagnostic capabilities.
- Partner with inference software, firmware, and hardware teams to architect system design.
What you'll need
- Strong experience developing and debugging production systems software in C, C++ or Rust on Linux.
- Experience leading technical projects and mentoring engineers while staying hands on.
- Deep understanding of operating systems fundamentals, including scheduling, concurrency, memory management, and I/O.
- Demonstrated ability to investigate performance problems on real hardware and validate improvements through profiling and measurement.
- Experience taking system software or performance improvements from prototype through production deployment.
- Understanding of hardware/software interactions and the ability to debug across application, kernel, and device boundaries.
Nice to have
- Experience with low-latency systems, high-frequency trading, HPC, or accelerator-based compute platforms.
- Experience with Linux kernel development or debugging, CPU isolation, NUMA, interrupt affinity, and performance tuning.
- Familiarity with PCIe, DMA, RDMA, device drivers, or high-performance networking.
- Experience bringing up new hardware platforms or working closely with firmware and hardware engineers.
- Exposure to manufacturing diagnostics, factory testing, or production system validation.
- Experience building systems or engineering teams at an early-stage startup.
Skills: host software, system configuration, CPU scheduling, memory management, Linux kernel, device drivers
This role has been open 2 days — well below the 51-day median for Infrastructure/Platform Software roles.
Infrastructure/Platform Software · Infrastructure Platform
|
Open roles in category
912
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$229k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Etched | All employers we track in this specialty (912 roles · 86 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 8 | 912 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 40 | 6047 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 132 d | 51 d (+81 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $229k |
Skills observed across this category: host software, system configuration, CPU scheduling, memory management, Linux kernel, device drivers
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 250 open roles · median 49 d
- Qualcomm · 60 open roles · median 61 d
- AMD · 51 open roles · median 28 d
- Cerebras · 40 open roles · median 74 d
- Graphcore · 38 open roles · median 101 d
- Intel Corporation · 33 open roles · median 21 d
How we counted: 912 open Infrastructure/Platform Software (Infrastructure Platform) roles from 86 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 9 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.