Applications Engineer- Cable Products

Application Engineer – Active Cable Products

Location:

Santa Clara, CA

We are seeking a highly skilled and customer-focused Application Engineer to support leading data center, AI networking, and high-performance computing customers in the qualification, deployment, and optimization of Amphenol active external cable and transceiver products. This role will focus on high-speed interconnect products including redriver-based Active Copper Cables and retimer-based Active Electrical Cables for 112G, 224G, 336G, and beyond.

The ideal candidate will have strong hands‑on lab experience, solid understanding of high-speed active cable architectures, and the ability to work directly with customers to debug, optimize, and qualify products in system-level environments. This position will be based in the Silicon Valley area and will require customer visits, lab support, and close collaboration with internal engineering, product, validation, and sales teams.

• Customer Technical Support and Qualification
  • Support end customers through product evaluation, qualification, bring‑up, interoperability testing, and deployment of active cable products.
  • Work closely with customers to understand system requirements, test conditions, qualification criteria, and technical issues.
  • Visit customer sites as needed to provide hands‑on debug, lab support, technical training, and issue resolution.
  • Support customer qualification activities for ACC and AEC products across 112G, 224G, 336G, and future high‑speed generations.
• Lab Debug and Product Optimization
  • Work in the lab to debug and optimize active cable performance, including link bring‑up, BER, FEC, SNR, eye margin, link training, power, thermal, EEPROM, and CMIS‑related issues.
  • Use high-speed test equipment and system platforms to reproduce customer issues and support root‑cause analysis.
  • Help tune and optimize retimer/redriver‑based cable products for customer‑specific platforms and channel conditions.
  • Analyze failures related to signal integrity, power integrity, firmware, management interface, interoperability, and system configuration.
• Interoperability and System-level Support
  • Support interoperability testing across customer systems including switches, NICs, servers, GPUs, AI platforms, and data center infrastructure.
  • Work with internal teams to validate compatibility across different host platforms, firmware versions, system configurations, and link environments.
  • Assist in identifying system‑level issues that may involve host behavior, cable/module firmware, DSP configuration, link training, or management interface interaction.
  • Interoperability experience with major switches, NIC, GPU, and server platforms is strongly preferred.
• Collaboration
  • Collaborate with signal integrity, hardware, firmware, validation, product management, sales, quality, and manufacturing teams to resolve customer issues.
  • Provide clear technical summaries, debug reports, customer feedback, and recommended corrective actions.
  • Support new product introduction by helping define customer qualification requirements and early field validation needs.
  • Help improve application engineering processes, lab procedures, debug guides, and customer‑facing technical documentation.

• Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience:
  • 5+ years of experience in application engineering, field application engineering, validation, system debug, interoperability testing, or product engineering.
  • Experience with high-speed interconnect products such as retimer/redriver-based cable assemblies.
  • Hands‑on experience supporting customer qualification or system‑level validation for data center, networking, AI, or high-performance computing applications.
  • Experience working directly with customers in technical debug, qualification, or field support situations.
• Technical
  
  Skills:
  
  
  • Strong understanding of high-speed serial links, signal integrity, link training, equalization, BER, FEC, eye margin, SNR, and system-level link performance.
  • Knowledge of retimer and redriver architectures and how they are used in active cable products.
  • Familiarity with EEPROM, I2C,…