Platform Solutions Thermal Engineer
$130k - $150k
Mid
Bachelor's, Master's
Cary, NC, USA
In Person
Mechanical EngineeringThermal & Fluids Engineering
About the job
Requirements
- A bachelor's or master's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Chemical Engineering, or a related thermal, mechanical, or energy discipline.
- Coursework, project, research, or laboratory experience in heat transfer, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, thermal management, or related engineering fundamentals.
- Working knowledge of structured problem solving, measurement, data analysis, and technical documentation.
- Ability to interpret system requirements, mechanical or electrical drawings, specifications, test results, and thermal data.
- Experience with Python, MATLAB, or another scripting language for automation, analysis, or engineering workflows.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical findings and tradeoffs clearly.
- Collaborative mindset, learning agility, ownership, and the ability to execute effectively in a cross-functional environment.
Responsibilities
- Analyze thermal performance of connectivity products and platform-level systems across representative operating conditions and use cases.
- Apply fundamentals of heat transfer, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and thermal management to identify risks and opportunities for improvement.
- Develop and execute thermal characterization and validation plans, including test setups, instrumentation, data collection, and repeatable procedures.
- Correlate analytical or simulation results with laboratory measurements and use data to identify root causes and guide design decisions.
- Investigate thermal issues across the hardware and system boundary, including temperature limits, cooling constraints, airflow, heat spreading, and system integration factors.
- Partner with mechanical, electrical, silicon, firmware, system validation, applications, and ecosystem teams to resolve issues and deliver integrated solutions.
- Support platform bring-up, product integration, customer or partner evaluations, and technical debug activities.
- Develop scripts and test utilities, such as Python- or MATLAB-based automation, to improve data collection, analysis, repeatability, and engineering efficiency.
- Document test methods, assumptions, results, limitations, design tradeoffs, and recommendations in clear technical reports.
- Participate in design reviews, technical discussions, issue-tracking workflows, and cross-functional problem-solving activities.
Desired Qualifications
- Experience with thermal modeling, computational fluid dynamics, finite-element analysis, or other engineering simulation methods.
- Hands-on experience with temperature sensors, thermocouples, data-acquisition systems, thermal chambers, infrared imaging, airflow measurement, or similar laboratory equipment.
- Familiarity with heat sinks, cold plates, heat pipes, thermal interface materials, fans, airflow management, or other cooling technologies.
- Experience correlating simulation or analytical predictions with hardware measurements and updating models based on test data.
- Exposure to high-speed connectivity, semiconductor devices, retimers, switches, network interface cards, servers, or AI-infrastructure platforms.
- Experience building automated test flows, analyzing large data sets, or improving laboratory and validation processes.
- Prior internship, co-op, capstone, research, or project experience involving thermal, mechanical, semiconductor, networking, computing, or data-center systems.
About the company
Astera Labs designs chips and hardware modules that move data between processors, memory and accelerators in data centers. Its customers include cloud providers, chip vendors and equipment makers building servers and large computing clusters for AI and other workloads. Retimers restore signal quality, switches connect devices and memory controllers expand the memory available to computing systems, while COSMOS software monitors and manages these links. The company sells its products directly and through distributors, using outside manufacturers to fabricate and assemble its hardware. Astera Labs was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in San Jose, California.
Company Size
501-1,000
Company Stage
IPO
Headquarters
Santa Clara, California
Founded
2017
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Revenue grew rapidly: Astera's August 2026 release reported preliminary Q2 revenue of $392.4 million, up 104% yearly.
- Memory products broadened: Astera announced three new Leo controllers in September 2026, with the family sampling to hyperscalers.
- Managers have a published pay band: Astera's live San Jose Ethernet applications role lists base pay of $158,400 to $230,000.
What critics are saying
- Revenue is concentrated: Astera's February 2026 filing says three end customers generated 86% of fiscal 2025 revenue.
- Chip production has one foundry: Astera's annual filing says TSMC fabricates all its integrated circuits.
- Customer support involves travel: Astera's live San Jose Ethernet applications manager role requires travel within the US and Asia.
What makes Astera Labs unique
- Hardware health is visible: Astera's COSMOS software monitors link performance, temperature and signal quality across systems.
- Switches connect large clusters: Astera's Scorpio X-Series supports up to 80 accelerators per switch across 320 data lanes.
- Integration gets tested early: Astera's Cloud-Scale Interop Lab checks switches against diverse PCIe hosts and endpoints.
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Benefits
- 401(k) Retirement Plan
- Flexible Work Hours