Principal / Senior Principal Electrical Design Engineer

Astera Labs • San Jose, CA

9h • $185,000 - $240,000

About The Position

Astera Labs is seeking a Principal Electrical Design Engineer to define and drive the architecture, design, and technical strategy for advanced board-level hardware across next-generation networking and high-performance connectivity platforms. The work spans complex hardware systems such as chassis boards, NIC cards, PCIe Gen6 platforms, and 800G Ethernet products.

This is a principal-level technical leadership role requiring deep domain expertise, strategic vision, and organizational influence. The engineer will set technical direction for board architecture, establish design methodologies, drive innovation in high-speed system design, and serve as a top technical authority across multiple programs. The role partners with silicon, SI/PI, mechanical, firmware, manufacturing, system, and executive teams to deliver products from concept through production and beyond.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field.
• 12 or more years of progressive hardware design experience, with deep board-level electrical engineering expertise and demonstrated technical leadership across multiple product generations.
• Extensive experience architecting and delivering production hardware at scale for server, networking, storage, or high-performance computing systems.
• Expert-level experience with high-speed SerDes-based systems supporting Ethernet, PCIe, or related protocols, including hands-on PCIe Gen5/Gen6 and 400G/800G Ethernet system design.
• Expert understanding of signal-integrity fundamentals, including impedance control, differential-pair routing, channel-loss optimization, crosstalk mitigation, and high-speed interface layout review.
• Expert power-integrity and PDN design knowledge, including sequencing, decoupling, transient-response optimization, and system-level power-architecture tradeoffs.
• Mastery of industry-standard schematic-capture and PCB design and review tools such as Cadence Allegro or OrCAD.
• Proven experience leading hardware bring-up and debug of complex platforms using oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and advanced lab instrumentation.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence technical direction across organizational boundaries from architecture through validation and production.
• Strong record of mentoring engineers and elevating team capabilities.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field.
• Experience defining architecture for NIC cards, accelerator cards, or other PCIe add-in card platforms across multiple generations.
• Experience leading server chassis or system-board design programs in dense, thermally constrained, high-availability environments.
• Deep expertise with 800G Ethernet and emerging 1.6T electrical interfaces and system integration challenges.
• Experience architecting solutions using retimers, redrivers, advanced clocking architectures, and high-speed interconnect subsystems.
• Expertise in PCIe and Ethernet compliance and validation workflows, including contributions to industry specifications or standards bodies.
• Experience managing contract manufacturer relationships, production ramp strategies, and yield optimization for complex hardware products.
• Proficiency in Python or similar scripting languages for lab automation, measurement analysis, hardware characterization, and design-flow optimization.
• Experience influencing product strategy and roadmap decisions at the organizational level.

Responsibilities

• Define and own board-level hardware architecture and technical roadmaps across product lines and platform generations.
• Establish scalable design standards, methodologies, and best practices across the hardware engineering organization.
• Make architectural tradeoff decisions for complex multilayer PCBs, balancing performance, cost, schedule, and manufacturability.
• Drive stack-up strategy, impedance optimization, and other signal-integrity development work.
• Own power-delivery architecture strategy, including regulation topologies, sequencing, transient response, protection, and platform power budgeting.
• Define hardware implementation strategies for management and control interfaces such as I2C, SPI, GPIO, and MDIO, as well as debug and observability architectures.
• Own schematic capture and board-level design for complex multilayer PCBs containing high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry.
• Provide technical authority and oversight for board-level hardware development and design approvals across multiple programs.
• Lead component strategy and qualification roadmaps with suppliers, sourcing, and manufacturing teams.
• Drive design-for-test, design-for-manufacturing, and design-for-reliability initiatives to improve manufacturability, yield, reliability, and production readiness.
• Define bring-up and validation strategies and frameworks for new hardware platforms.
• Lead root-cause analysis of complex hardware issues involving high-speed interfaces, power delivery, clocks, resets, and control paths.
• Improve debug methodologies, validation coverage, and failure-analysis processes.
• Partner with firmware, software, and system teams to define and validate initialization sequences, telemetry, diagnostics, and platform functionality.
• Own corrective-action frameworks and incorporate lessons learned into design standards and review processes.
• Serve as the technical escalation point and decision-maker for hardware design challenges across the organization.
• Coordinate with SI/PI, mechanical, thermal, firmware, system, and manufacturing teams throughout the product lifecycle, resolving cross-domain technical conflicts.
• Work strategically with silicon vendors and internal ASIC teams on platform architecture, bring-up, errata resolution, compliance, and next-generation readiness.
• Mentor senior and lead engineers and raise technical capabilities across the hardware engineering team.
• Lead and contribute to design and architecture reviews and technical publications.
• Represent the hardware engineering organization in executive reviews, customer engagements, and industry forums as needed.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal