Spares Planning & Operations Lead

About Etched

Etched is building AI chips that are hard-coded for individual model architectures. Our first product (Sohu) only supports transformers, but has an order of magnitude more throughput and lower 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.

Job Summary

Etched is seeking a highly organized, analytical, and execution-focused Spares Planning & Operations Manager to build and lead our spare parts strategy across the full hardware lifecycle. In this role, you will own global spares forecasting, procurement planning, inventory optimization, and operational readiness to ensure maximum hardware availability and minimal downtime. You will partner closely with Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Field Deployment, Engineering, and Finance to design processes, tools, and reporting that scale with a rapidly growing hardware footprint.

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-paced environments, enjoys solving deeply operational challenges, and can balance strategic planning with hands-on execution.

Key responsibilities

• Develop and own the global spares strategy—including stocking models, geographic distribution, service-level targets, and replenishment logic

• Build and maintain long-range and short-term forecasts for spare part demand, including failure rates, installed base growth, and service-level agreements (SLAs)

• Establish planning parameters (safety stock, reorder points, min/max levels) and continuously refine them based on actual product performance

• Manage spares procurement and inventory across warehouses, depots, repair centers, and field nodes; ensure accuracy and visibility through strong processes and systems.

• Drive the spares operations to ensure delivery performance against customer SLAs and operational metrics/KPIs, ensuring the right parts are delivered to the right locations at the right time

• Create and refine standard operating procedures (SOPs) for spares planning, stocking, transportation, and field fulfillment

• Partner with Finance to manage budget, track material spend, and optimize working capital

You may be a good fit if you have (Must-have qualifications)

• 5–10+ years of experience in reverse supply chain planning and spares/service logistics

• Proven expertise in material planning, inventory optimization, and supply chain analytics

• Experience supporting hardware products with complex BOMs and tight uptime requirements (e.g., semiconductor equipment, datacenter hardware, industrial systems, compute infrastructure)

• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; proficient in Excel/Sheets, ERP/MRP systems, and inventory management tools

• Excellent communication and cross-functional leadership skills, able to work closely with customers, suppliers, and internal teams

• Demonstrated ability to build processes from scratch in fast-moving environments.

Strong candidates may also have experience with (Nice-to-have qualifications)

• Experience in high-availability or mission-critical environments (e.g., compute, manufacturing, robotics, aerospace), especially supporting server, networking, or AI hardware deployments at scale

• Familiarity with quality and reliability modeling (MTBF, failure mode tracking, ASR projections)

• Background in data-driven service analytics (failure rate analysis, cost optimization, predictive maintenance)

• Experience in ERP/MRP implementation or integration experience

• Comfort operating in ambiguity and leading through influence

Benefits

• Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with generous premium coverage

• Housing subsidy of $2,000/month for those living within walking distance of the office

• Daily lunch and dinner in our office

• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)

How we’re different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We think most of the progress in the AI field has come from using more FLOPs to train and run models, and the best way to get more FLOPs is to build model-specific hardware. Larger and larger training runs encourage companies to consolidate around fewer model architectures, which creates a market for single-model ASICs.

We are a fully in-person team in San Jose (Santana Row), and greatly value engineering skills. We do not have boundaries between engineering and research, and we expect all of our technical staff to contribute to both as needed.