Operator-In-Residence (OIR): Semiconductors

Position Overview

• Location Type: Remote
• Job Type: Full-Time
• Salary: $125K - $180K

Primary is the largest early-stage venture firm in the world, with $1B in assets under management, investing in pre-seed and seed-stage startups based in New York City. The firm’s Incubation arm, Primary Labs, launched in 2019 to support the ideation, research and launch of new startups. Primary’s first three incubated companies will return its first fund many times over, and Primary is now primed for substantial growth in its Incubation efforts.

Primary Labs is looking for an Operator-In-Residence (OIR) to join its Incubation program with a focus on opportunities within the semiconductor industry. This role is open to remote candidates. We’re amidst the biggest infrastructure build out in decades. There is $1T+ of cap-ex going into building out AI infrastructure over the next decade, with much of that spend going into compute. With complexity, scale, and demand rising, we believe the semiconductor industry needs new innovation, across software and hardware. As a result, we believe there is a unique opportunity for new entrants to start generational companies in the semiconductor industry.

Primary has a concerted focus to invest in and incubate businesses across the semis and data center value chain, a recent example being Etched, the world’s first transformer ASIC. Etched is disrupting the GPU market with a product purpose built for transformer inference, enabling use cases we never could have imagined like real-time video games. The company recently raised a $120M Series A, with features in TechCrunch and Crunchbase.

We’re hiring an Operator in Residence (OIR) to explore and incubate new ventures in the semiconductor space, with a dual-pronged approach across academic commercialization and industry opportunity mapping.

Responsibilities

As an OIR, you will work across two core vectors:

Academic Commercialization

• Engage deeply with researchers working on cutting-edge innovations in semiconductors, networking, memory, and power/cooling.
• Uncover and evaluate promising technologies coming out of academia and explore paths to commercialize them—through partnership, licensing, or incubation.
• Be technically fluent enough to “talk the talk” with academics and industry experts.
• Translate complex technical ideas into business opportunities.

Industry-Driven Opportunity Discovery

• Dive into the commercial semiconductor landscape—including EDA tools, data center software, and emerging infrastructure needs—to identify white space opportunities.
• Conduct deep customer discovery.
• Develop insight into industry pain points.
• Work closely with our investment team to validate and shape potential 0-to-1 companies.

About the Role

• Support Primary’s idea generation and vetting process.
• Connect with academics and researchers.

Requirements

• Experience performing research and analysis on the semiconductor, networking, memory and power/cooling industry more broadly, in order to gain a full understanding of the landscape.
• Commercially minded with a depth of knowledge on incumbents and newer entrants to the space.
• Excited about building a business from the ground up (0 to 1).
• Passion for researching and identifying new opportunities within this evolving space.
• Comfortable talking to technical operators in the semiconductor industry (you do not need to be technical yourself).
• Belief that there is a unique opportunity to build a multi-billion-dollar business in the semiconductor space.

Company Information

Primary is the largest early-stage venture firm in the world, with $1B in assets under management, investing in pre-seed and seed-stage startups based in New York City. The firm’s Incubation arm, Primary Labs, launched in 2019 to support the ideation, research and launch of new startups.