Senior Principal Engineer - Field

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  .

As a Senior Principal Engineer - Field Applications Engineering, you will serve as a trusted technical partner to customers deploying Astera Labs' high-speed connectivity solutions. You will lead the continuation of critical customer support for Ethernet and PCIe products, translating system requirements into reliable, production-ready designs and accelerating issue resolution across complex AI infrastructure platforms.

Based onsite in San Jose, you will work closely with customers and cross-functional teams across sales, product management, design engineering, validation, and operations. Your expertise in high-speed interfaces, physical-layer behavior, and system-level integration will help customers bring next-generation rack-scale AI architectures to market with confidence.

• Lead technical engagements with strategic customers from architecture definition through deployment and production support.
• Own customer escalations, establish clear action plans, and drive issues to timely closure with measurable outcomes.
• Present design recommendations, bring-up results, and technical tradeoffs to customer engineering and leadership teams.

• Develop and execute system-level debug plans for Ethernet and PCIe connectivity issues, including link training, interoperability, compliance, and performance.
• Analyze physical-layer behavior, signal-integrity symptoms, error logs, lab data, and system telemetry to isolate root causes.
• Partner with engineering teams to reproduce field issues, influence product improvements, and communicate effective workarounds or corrective actions.

• Collaborate with sales and product management to capture customer requirements and shape application strategies for emerging AI infrastructure designs.
• Create technical collateral, reference architectures, application notes, and enablement materials for customers and internal teams.
• Mentor Field Applications Engineers and contribute to scalable processes for customer onboarding, issue tracking, and product adoption.

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 12-20 years of experience in field applications engineering, system engineering, product engineering, or a related domain.
• Deep hands-on experience with Ethernet and/or PCIe systems, high-speed Ser Des, link training, interoperability, and compliance.
• Strong understanding of physical-layer concepts, signal integrity, board-level bring-up, lab instrumentation, and system-level debug.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex customer escalations, debug, and communicate technical concepts clearly to diverse audiences.
• Ability to work onsite in San Jose and travel to customer and partner locations as needed.

• Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience with PCIe Gen 5/6/7,…