Kernel Driver Software Engineer

About Etched

Etched is building the world’s first AI inference system purpose-built for transformers — delivering over 10x higher performance and dramatically lower cost and latency than a B200. With Etched ASICs, you can build products that would be impossible with GPUs, like real‑time video generation models and extremely deep & parallel chain‑of‑thought reasoning agents. 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.

• Design, develop, and maintain kernel‑mode drivers ensuring high reliability, informative debug, and optimal performance.
• Analyze and optimize driver performance for demanding AI workloads, focusing on minimizing latency and maximizing throughput.
• Collaborate closely with hardware engineers throughout the ASIC design process.
• Implement driver support for device virtualization technologies, including SR‑IOV, VFIO, and para‑virtualization.
• Implement efficient memory management strategies considering kernel memory mapping, page tables configuration, NUMA awareness for device data caching, and IOMMU configuration.
• Build kernel drivers fundamentally designed to support and maintain security across host processes, physical memory spaces, and device attestation.
• Diagnose and resolve complex driver‑related issues, using common kernel debugging tools and techniques (ftrace, dmesg, etc.) to identify and fix bugs.
• Design and implement synchronization mechanisms to handle concurrent access to multiple accelerators.
• Develop and execute comprehensive test plans to validate driver functionality, stability, and performance in manufacturing and in general production environments.
• Collaborate with software and hardware teams to diagnose and resolve complex system‑level issues.

• Develop and optimize kernel‑mode drivers for new ML accelerators.
• Implement and optimize memory management, including kernel memory mapping and IOMMU configurations, for high‑bandwidth data transfers.
• Debug and resolve complex driver‑related issues impacting ML workload performance.
• Develop performance benchmarks and profiling tools to analyze driver performance.
• Integrate driver support for advanced features like hardware virtualization and security, including SR‑IOV and VFIO.
• Optimizing PCIe communication between the host and PCIe devices, using advanced equipment like PCIe analyzers.
• Implement and debug power management features for PCIe devices.
• Integrating ML accelerators into containerized and virtualized environments.
• Implementing and optimizing para‑virtualization techniques for PCIe devices.
• Configure and optimize page tables for efficient memory access from the ML accelerator.
• Participate in hardware‑software co‑design reviews across teams to optimize performance and power efficiency.

• Proficiency in C/C++.
• Strong understanding of kernel‑mode driver development and debugging.
• Deep understanding of operating system internals (Linux preferred).
• Experience with hardware/software interfacing and device drivers.
• Experience with memory management and synchronization in kernel environments.
• Strong understanding of PCIe and other hardware interfaces.
• Experience with device virtualization technologies, including SR‑IOV and VFIO.
• Strong understanding of kernel memory mapping, page table configuration, and IOMMU.
• Familiarity with hardware‑software co‑design principles.
• Proven ability to analyze complex technical problems and provide effective solutions.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git).
• Experience with debugging tools (e.g., gdb, kgdb).

• Candidates with experience in developing and debugging kernel‑mode drivers for GPU or other accelerator devices.
• Candidates with a strong understanding of hardware/software interactions.
• Candidates with experience in optimizing driver performance for demanding workloads.
• Candidates with experience in ML workloads.
• Candidates who have debugged complex hardware and software…