{"id":3725757,"url":"https://alion.io/job/etched-ia-research-engineer-kernels-intern","title":"IA Research Engineer (Kernels) Intern","company":{"id":5021,"name":"Etched","domain":"etched.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/etched","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":88,"open_postings":83,"ghost_share":0.12,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":142,"computed_at":"2026-11-04T06:34:25Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"intern","employment_type":"internship","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Fine-tuning","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Model Context Protocol","optional":false},{"name":"Multi-Agent Systems","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-04T02:39:25Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-04","last_verified_at":"2026-11-04T09:44:51Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":0},"description":"About Etched\nEtched 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.\nJob Summary\nWe are seeking talented Spring ‘27 and Summer ‘27 IA Research Engineer (Kernels) interns to build the agents that accelerate how Etched produces frontier tokens. You will embed with our kernels team and work alongside our founders on agentic harnesses, tools, and evals that let agents do long-running engineering work people actually rely on. This role is for builders who thrive on ambiguity, have real product sense, and want to own problems end to end.\nKey responsibilities\nEmbed with our kernels team to find high-leverage bottlenecks and help turn them into tools engineers use every day.\n\nBuild and deploy LLM agents wired into our engineering workflows via tool-calling and MCP.\n\nHelp build execution environments where agents can verify their own work, with sandboxed access to simulators, compilers, profilers, and real hardware.\n\nShip internal products end to end, including the interfaces, data pipelines, and infrastructure behind them.\n\nDesign evals and track adoption to measure which tools are working and which aren’t.\n\nSupport special projects with the founders across the company.\n\nYou may be a good fit if you have\nProgress towards a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD degree in computer science, computer engineering, or a related field\n\nStrong software engineering fundamentals and a record of shipping projects other people use\n\nBuilt agents for multi-step tasks beyond calling an API: tool design, context management, evals, and failure analysis\n\nHeavy use of coding agents, including reading their transcripts and changing the system when an agent is confidently wrong\n\nHigh agency in unfamiliar domains, product sense, and extreme attention to detail\n\nStrong candidates may have some experience with\nChip development, GPU kernels, hardware, or manufacturing\n\nInfrastructure, data engineering, or DevOps\n\nFine-tuning, RAG over technical data, or multi-agent orchestration\n\nHackathons, startups, or side projects with real users\n\nWe encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every qualification.\nProgram details\n12-week paid internship\n\nGenerous housing support for those relocating\n\nDaily lunch and dinner in our office\n\nBased at our office in San Jose, CA\n\nDirect mentorship from industry leaders and world-class engineers\n\nOpportunity to work on one of the most important problems of our time\n\nFor any questions, contact .\nHow we’re different\nEtched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors.\nWe are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. 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