Astera Labs

Designs chips that connect data center systems

Principal Product Application Engineer

Pre-Sales Solution EngineeringConfirmed live in the last 24 hours

Full-timeSan Jose, CA, USANo salary listed

About the Job

Requirements

A Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering is required; a Master’s degree is preferred.
At least 10 years of experience designing in complex system-on-chip or silicon products with a high-speed interface, preferably PCI Express.
Strong working knowledge of PCI Express Link Training and Status State Machine at the physical-layer level, associated standards, and debugging, with recent PCI Express 4.0 experience at minimum.
Silicon or system bring-up and debugging experience in customer systems.
Experience driving technical issue resolution and directing internal teams while communicating with customers through field applications engineering and sales teams.
Hands-on experience with protocol analyzers or exercisers, high-speed oscilloscopes, or bit error rate testers.
Technical writing skills for producing precise application notes and similar internal and customer-facing documentation.
Ability to support global customer engagements and travel for on-site activities, reviews, and system bring-up.
An entrepreneurial, open-minded, customer-focused approach.

Responsibilities

Provide technical guidance to original design manufacturers to overcome design challenges.
Generate collateral for existing and new products.
Provide feedback to internal teams to improve products and processes.
Support the development and design-in of semiconductor products for PCI Express and Compute Express Link.
Support key original design manufacturers directly and investigate leading-edge semiconductor product challenges in the laboratory.
Own technical issue resolution by driving and directing internal teams and customer communication through field applications engineering and sales teams.
Support global customer engagements, including on-site activities, design reviews, and system bring-up.

Desired Qualifications

Experience with PCI Express 5.0 or Compute Express Link.
Experience triaging complex customer-reported issues across silicon, firmware, hardware board design, and system environments.
Development or support experience for PCI Express or Ethernet switch or retimer products.
Experience with PCI Express compliance testing methodology and troubleshooting.
Comfort working with software and firmware associated with semiconductor products, including firmware development in C and scripting in Python or equivalent programming languages.
Understanding of data center systems, including servers, JBODs, networking switches, routers, and interconnects.

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs’ Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL®, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe®, and UALink™ semiconductor-based technologies with the company’s COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up, and scale-out connectivity. The company’s custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com.

Job Description:

As an Astera Labs Principal Product Application Engineer, you will need to provide technical guidance to ODMs to overcome design challenges, generate collateral for existing and new products, and drive innovation by providing insightful feedback to other internal teams to continuously improve products and processes. We need experience supporting the development and designing-in of semiconductor products for PCIe/CXL. There are opportunities to support key ODMs directly, and also to dive deep in the lab to address the challenges associated with leading edge semiconductor products.

Basic Qualifications

Strong academic and technical background in electrical engineering. At minimum, a Bachelor’s in EE is required, Master’s is preferred.
Minimum of 10 years’ experience designing in complex SoC/silicon products with a high speed (preferably PCIe) interface.
Entrepreneurial, open-minded behavior and can-do attitude. Think and act with the customer in mind!

Required Experience

Strong working knowledge of PCIe LTSSM at a physical layer level, associated standards, and debug. Most recent experience with PCIe 4.0 at a minimum, some experience with 5.0/CXL preferred.
Silicon/System bring-up and debug experience in customer systems.
Technical ownership of issue resolution: Driving and directing internal teams, and driving communication to customers through FAE and sales teams.
Firsthand experience with lab equipment such as protocol analyzers/exercisers, high-speed oscilloscopes, or BERTs.
Technical writing skills to generate clear, precise documentation including application notes and similar guides for internal and customer-facing audiences.
Global customer engagement support, with travel as required for on-site activities, reviews, and system bring-up.

Preferred experience

Triaging complex customer reported issues which require taking into account multiple layers of conditions; for instance, silicon, firmware, hardware board design, and system environment.
Development/support for PCIe or Ethernet Switch or Retimer products.
PCIe compliance testing methodology and troubleshooting.
Comfort working with software/firmware associated with semiconductor products, such as; Firmware development with C-language, scripting with Python or other equivalent programming languages.
Understanding of Data Center systems like Servers, JBOGs/JBODs, Networking switches/routers/interconnects etc.

We know that creativity and innovation happen more often when teams include diverse ideas, backgrounds, and experiences, and we actively encourage everyone with relevant experience to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, veterans, parents, and individuals with disabilities.

About the Company

Astera Labs

Designs chips that connect data center systems

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: San Jose, CA
Founded: 2017

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