The posting, in Astera Labs's own words
archived Oct 20, 2026Astera 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 .
About the Role
We are 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. This role encompasses complex hardware systems including 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. You will set the technical direction for board architecture, establish design methodologies, drive innovation in high-speed system design, and serve as the top technical authority across multiple programs. You will partner with and influence silicon, SI/PI, mechanical, firmware, manufacturing, system, and executive teams to deliver industry-leading products from concept through production and beyond.
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Technical Strategy and Architecture Leadership
Define and own the board-level hardware architecture and technical roadmap across multiple product lines and platform generations Establish design standards, methodologies, and best practices that scale across the hardware engineering organization Drive architectural tradeoff decisions for complex multi-layer PCBs integrating high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry, balancing performance, cost, schedule, and manufacturability Get involved and drive discussions on stack-up strategy, impedance optimization and other SI relates development work Own power delivery architecture strategy including multi-rail regulation topologies, advanced sequencing schemes, transient response optimization, protection philosophies, and power budgeting across platform generations Define and evolve hardware implementation strategies for management and control interfaces such as I2C, SPI, GPIO, MDIO, and debug and observability architectures
Electrical Design Ownership
Own schematic capture and board-level design for complex multi-layer PCBs with high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry Serve as the technical authority for board-level hardware development across high-performance server and connectivity platforms, including NIC cards, PCIe add-in cards, and chassis-integrated hardware Provide technical oversight and approval for schematic capture and board-level designs across multiple designs Lead component strategy and qualification roadmaps in partnership with suppliers, sourcing, and manufacturing teams Drive design-for-excellence initiatives including DFT, DFM, and DFR to systematically improve manufacturability, yield, reliability, and production readiness across all programs
Bring-Up, Validation, and Debug Leadership
Define and own the bring-up and validation strategy for new hardware platforms, establishing frameworks that improve first-pass success rates across the organization Lead root-cause analysis of the most complex and escalated hardware issues across high-speed interfaces, power delivery, clocks, resets, and control paths Drive systemic improvements to 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-level functionality Own corrective action frameworks and feed lessons learned into design standards and review processes