Strategic Buyer

About the role

We're looking for a highly organized operator to build the procurement and operations backbone behind our hardware programs. You'll work with engineering, ops, finance, facilities, and outside suppliers to source critical goods and services, run purchasing workflows, and improve the systems that keep us moving fast. This is a hands-on role for someone who likes owning messy, high-urgency problems and becoming the person all teams trust to get things done — across lab equipment, facilities, engineering services, production support, and business-critical vendors.

Key Responsibilities

• Own day-to-day purchasing across indirect and NPI spend, converting internal requests into RFQs, quotes, requisitions, and complete, accurate POs (vendor, location, quantity, price, item description, delivery address, and requester context).
• Track open orders through delivery and communicate PO status clearly to requesters, Supply Chain, Logistics, AP, and Engineering.
• Review quotes for price, lead time, MOQ, payment and shipping terms, and commercial accuracy; negotiate pricing, expedite fees, and shipping costs.
• Manage supplier relationships, setting clear expectations on documentation, PO requirements, shipment timing, and payment terms.
• Partner with AP and Finance on vendor setup, invoice submission, payment requirements, and PO/invoice discrepancies.
• Improve procurement workflows, trackers, templates, and handoffs as Etched scales.

Must-have qualifications

• 3–5 years in procurement, purchasing, supply chain, NPI operations, manufacturing operations, or hardware startup operations.
• Hands-on experience issuing and tracking POs, managing RFQs, negotiating with suppliers, and coordinating deliveries across indirect and technical/NPI categories.
• Experience with ERP/procurement tools such as NetSuite, Mesh, SAP, or Ramp.
• Familiarity with vendor onboarding, NDAs, W-9s, banking forms, and invoice/payment workflows.
• Strong written communication with suppliers and internal stakeholders.
• Commercial instincts — able to challenge pricing, compare against prior buys, and flag quotes that don’t add up.
• Strong follow-through: tracks many small open loops and closes them without reminders.
• Comfortable operating in ambiguity and moving quickly without perfect inputs.
• High ownership, low ego, and a bias toward action.

Nice-to-have qualifications

• Experience in hardware, semiconductors, electronics, manufacturing, data center infrastructure, or contract manufacturing.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, and vision packages with generous premium coverage
• $500 per month credit for waiving medical benefits
• Housing subsidy of $2k per month for those living within walking distance of the office
• Relocation support for those moving to San Jose (Santana Row)
• Variety of wellness benefits covering fitness, mental health, and more
• Daily lunch and dinner in our office
• Unlimited compute budget subject to ROI justification

How We’re Different

Etched believes in the Bitter Lesson. We are the first inference-focused frontier AI system, betting early on transformer and transformer-like architectures and on increasing model sizes. Our addressable market is the entirety of inference, unlike many of our competitors. 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 and work across disciplines as needed.