Principal Validation Engineer

Astera Labs • San Jose, CA

6d

About The Position

As a Principal Validation Engineer , you will join a cutting-edge mixed-signal design team and lead the end-to-end post‑silicon validation and characterization effort. You will own the development and execution of comprehensive validation plans, design and implement test methodologies, and drive hands‑on lab work to verify silicon against specification and performance targets. You will collaborate closely with design, firmware, and system teams to translate architectural goals into measurable test strategies, build automated test frameworks, and analyze complex analog and digital interactions. Your work will include defining test requirements, creating characterization flows, debugging silicon anomalies, and delivering clear, data‑driven recommendations that influence product direction. This role requires deep technical expertise in mixed‑signal systems, strong problem‑solving skills, and the ability to mentor engineers across disciplines. You will be expected to champion best practices for validation, optimize test coverage and throughput, and ensure that products meet reliability, yield, and performance objectives before production.

Requirements

• Minimum of a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering while a Master’s degree is preferred.
• Minimum of 10 years relevant experience on hands-on mixed high-speed lab experience working with equipment such as protocol analyzers, BERT, real-time scopes, sampling scopes, TDR, and VNA.
• Hands-on experience debugging retimers (equalization tuning, pass-through mode, clocking, reset/link sequencing).
• Strong background in NRZ/PAM4 architectures, investigating issues with jitter, CDR/PLL behavior, equalization (DFE, CTLE, FFE), crosstalk, and power integrity.
• Experience in post-silicon validation and bring-up of high-speed PHYs or retimers.
• Basic knowledge of key, high-speed design blocks such as PLL’s, CTLE, DFE, Tx EQ, PAM4 signaling
• Solid problem-solving and analytical skills with ability to narrow down complex multi-layer failures.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

• Experience in mixed-signal system testing, characterization, validation and compliance
• Hands-on experience with signal integrity test equipment and techniques
• Familiarity with IEEE 802.3x Ethernet standards
• Strong Python and C/C++ skills
• Working knowledge of common serial data specifications such as I2C, I3C, SPI, etc

Responsibilities

• Be responsible for designing, developing, executing characterization and validation plan
• Participate in design reviews, design specifications and architecture
• Perform task including test execution, automation, debugging, silicon bringup, interop, performance optimization collaborate with cross-functional mixed signal design team to provide detailed results, RCA on issues, optimization, characterization, validation and compliance report.
• Directly root-cause failures to the circuit, package, firmware, or protocol-level interactions.
• Collaborate with design, validation, and system engineering teams as needed.
• Document debug findings, propose design/process/test improvements, and contribute to FA methodologies.
• Develop python test scripts to configure, control, and get status from multiple DSP HW platforms for improving firmware stability.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Number of Employees: 251-500 employees