Principal Product Applications Engineer – Scorpio

The role

You will help customers and internal teams deploy high-performance PCIe fabric solutions for rack-scale AI infrastructure. You will translate system requirements into architectures and lead platform bring-up for Scorpio switches.

What you will do

• Lead technical engagements with customers and ecosystem partners to define Scorpio-based PCIe Firmware architectures and deployment requirements.
• Develop reference designs, application guidance, technical presentations, and system-level collateral.
• Translate customer use cases into Scorpio Firmware requirements, integration plans, and prioritized technical actions.
• Drive system bring-up, debug, and interoperability across PCIe hosts, BMCs, GPUs, NICs, storage devices, and other high-performance endpoints.
• Partner with firmware teams to define, implement, and validate device configuration, traffic routing, boot flows, telemetry, recovery mechanisms, and field-debug capabilities.
• Analyze link training, enumeration, performance, error handling, data traffic and system stability issues using protocol traces, logs, and lab instrumentation.
• Build and maintain firmware, validation, and automation workflows.
• Partner with firmware, architecture, design, validation, and FAE teams to resolve complex issues from prototype through mass production.
• Lead root-cause analysis, communicate risks and recommendations, and drive issues to closure.
• Influence customer decisions on product enhancements and ecosystem interoperability plans.

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
• 8–12 years of experience in product applications, firmware development, systems engineering, platform validation, or a related semiconductor domain.
• Strong understanding of PCIe Switch Firmware, PCIe architecture (including link training, enumeration, configuration space, error handling, performance, and system interoperability).
• Experience with firmware development or debug, including the ability to read code, interpret logs, and collaborate effectively with firmware developers.
• Hands-on experience with system bring-up, lab debug, protocol analysis, and root-cause investigation across complex hardware and software stacks.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to have

• Experience with PCIe Gen 5, Gen 6 or Gen 7, PCIe fabric switches, retimers, or other high-speed connectivity products.
• Familiarity with UALink, UCIe, or emerging scale-up and scale-out interconnect architectures is a plus.
• Experience developing validation plans, firmware test strategies, lab automation, or customer-facing technical collateral.
• Background supporting AI servers, accelerator platforms, hyperscale infrastructure, or high-performance computing systems.
• Demonstrated ability to lead ambiguous, cross-functional technical challenges in a fast-paced, high-growth environment.

Benefits

• discretionary bonus
• incentives
• benefits

About the company

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. The company’s Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates semiconductor-based technologies with the COSMOS software suite.