Job Description

Our client, Etched, is seeking a Legal Operations Associate.

About

Etched is building AI chips that are hard-coded for individual model architectures. Their 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 an experienced legal operations lead to drive operational excellence across its legal team and support its ambitious growth trajectory within a rapidly growing semiconductor company operating at the edge of computing and AI. This unique role will report to the Head of Legal and partner on strategic planning, management of legal budget, vendor relationships, and program/project management. Etched is seeking a sharp, innovative legal operations professional who combines strong business judgment with practical problem-solving abilities, a deep understanding of high-growth startup environments, and the ability to integrate traditional legal operations expertise with business risk assessment. This candidate will handle hands-on operational work while building scalable processes and establishing foundational technology systems that will scale with Etched’s growth.

Key responsibilities

• Manage the department's technology stack. Lead the exploration, development, and integration of AI-powered tools and other legal tech solutions to enhance efficiency and effectiveness.
• Drive the identification, development, and implementation of streamlined and efficient processes across the legal department to improve productivity, scalability, service delivery, and support operational risk mitigation.
• Support integrations between legal tools and business systems (sales, procurement, finance) to streamline operations
• Develop and manage the legal department's annual budget, including forecasting, tracking expenditures, and implementing cost-optimization initiatives.
• Maintain organized systems for contract management and legal entity records; support development of scalable legal infrastructure.
• Liaise and manage outside counsel, People Operations, and business teams on filings, agreements, and compliance matters.
• Build and evolve internal legal templates, workflows, and knowledge management systems to support scale.
• Conduct research, project manage, and organize projects
• Coordinate with customers, vendors, and internal stakeholders

You may be a good fit if you have

• 7+ years of legal operations experience in a law firm or in-house legal department.
• Proven track record of strategic planning, vendor management, and program execution.
• Experience implementing and integrating AI and emerging technologies into legal workflows.
• Demonstrated expertise in strategic planning and managing vendor relationships with a proven track record of building new or improving existing programs and processes
• Expertise with legal operations platforms (e.g., matter management, e-billing), and a strong understanding of legal department processes and tools.
• Ability to thrive in dynamic, fast-paced environments where no task is too big or too small
• Proactive, collaborative, and adaptable team player with a high standard of precision and confidentiality.
• Strong experience with Microsoft Power Platform, API integration, and data analytics (Tableau, dashboards); familiarity with generative AI tools and building GenAI agents is a plus.
• Prior experience supporting semiconductor or hardware companies is a plus.

Compensation & Benefits

• The base salary for this role starts at $185,000 and is commensurate with experience, skills, and qualifications.
• Full medical, dental, and vision packages, with 100% of premiums covered
• 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 West San Jose

How Etched is 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 West San Jose, 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.

Etched has exclusively engaged Kerwin in conducting this search. Any resumes sent directly to Etched will be forwarded to Kerwin. If you want to speak about or apply for this role, please contact Anne Kerwin Payne (anne@kerwin.com) at Kerwin.

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