Principal / Senior Principal Electrical Design Engineer

The role

This person will define and drive the architecture, design, and technical strategy for advanced board-level hardware. They will work on next-generation networking and high-performance connectivity platforms including chassis boards, NIC cards, PCIe Gen6 platforms, and 800G Ethernet products.

What you will do

• Define and own board-level hardware architecture and technical roadmap
• Establish design standards, methodologies, and best practices
• Drive architectural tradeoff decisions for multi-layer PCBs
• Own power delivery architecture strategy
• Define hardware implementation strategies for management and control interfaces
• Own schematic capture and board-level design for complex multi-layer PCBs
• Lead component strategy and qualification roadmaps
• Drive design-for-excellence initiatives including DFT, DFM, and DFR
• Define and own the bring-up and validation strategy for new hardware platforms
• Lead root-cause analysis of complex hardware issues

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field
• 12+ years of progressive hardware design experience
• Extensive track record of architecting and delivering production hardware for server, networking, storage, or high-performance compute systems at scale
• Expert-level experience with high-speed SerDes-based systems supporting Ethernet, PCIe, or related protocols
• Deep hands-on experience with PCIe Gen5/Gen6 and 400G/800G Ethernet system design
• Expert understanding of signal integrity fundamentals
• Expert power integrity and PDN design knowledge
• Mastery of industry-standard schematic capture and PCB design and review tools such as Cadence Allegro or OrCAD
• Proven track record leading hardware bring-up and debug of complex platforms using oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and advanced lab instrumentation
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence technical direction
• Strong track record of mentoring engineers

Nice to have

• Advanced degree preferred
• Experience defining architecture for NIC cards, accelerator cards, or other PCIe add-in card platforms across multiple generations
• Experience leading server chassis or system board design programs in dense, thermally constrained, high-availability environments
• Deep expertise with 800G Ethernet and emerging 1.6T electrical interfaces and system integration challenges
• Experience architecting solutions using retimers, redrivers, advanced clocking architectures, and high-speed interconnect subsystems
• Expertise in compliance and validation workflows for PCIe and Ethernet platforms
• Experience driving contract manufacturer relationships, production ramp strategies, and yield optimization
• Scripting and automation proficiency in Python or similar languages
• Experience influencing product strategy and roadmap decisions at the organizational level

About the company

Astera Labs 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.