Principal Application Engineer

Optical Product Application Engineer, Principal

Location: San Jose, CA

Astera Labs is redefining the connectivity fabric of rack-scale AI infrastructure, and optical connectivity is one of the most pivotal technologies shaping the next generation of scale-up and scale-out systems. As a Principal Application Engineer for Optical Products, you will be the senior technical face to our largest hyperscale and AI platform customers — driving optical solution adoption, link bring-up, and system-level enablement across our switching and connectivity portfolio.

This is a hands-on, customer-facing leadership role at the intersection of silicon, optics, and system design. You'll partner closely with hyperscalers, optical module makers, and our internal silicon, firmware, and hardware teams to ensure flawless deployment of optics-based platforms supporting UALink, PCIe, and high-speed Ethernet — directly accelerating Astera's hyper-growth in AI connectivity.

Key Responsibilities

• Customer Technical Leadership
• Serve as the principal technical authority for optical solutions across hyperscale and AI platform customers, driving architecture reviews, design-ins, and deployment escalations.
• Deliver technical documentations, product training, and demonstrations to customer engineering teams
• Build trusted advisor relationships with key customers or partners and drive product adoption
• System & Link Debug and Validation Support
• Support customer lab bring-up, characterization, debug of links covering optical and electrical co-design, SerDes tuning, link training, and system validation.
• Lead root cause analysis and debugging of end-to-end signal/power integrity, interoperability, and protocol issues in customer systems.
• Develop reference test methodologies, lab automation, and debug playbooks adopted across customer base.
• Cross-Functional Engineering Partnership
• Partner with silicon, firmware, hardware, and product teams to root-cause complex issues and drive design improvements back into the product line.
• Collaborate with optical module and ecosystem partners on packaging interfaces, thermal/mechanical integration, and reliability.
• Influence next-gen optical architecture and feature definition based on field learnings and customer roadmaps.
• Technical Documentation & Field Excellence
• Create product documentation including datasheets, application notes, integration and user guides.
• Mentor application and field engineers, raising the bar on technical depth in optics, high-speed SerDes, and switching systems.
• Represent Astera Labs at industry forums, standards bodies, and customer technology summits as an optical subject-matter expert.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Photonics, Physics, or a related technical field.
• 8 years of applications, systems, or design engineering experience in high-speed connectivity, optics, or networking silicon.
• Deep expertise in high-speed SerDes and physical layer fundamentals (channel modeling, equalization, jitter, BER, link training).
• Hands-on experience with at least one of: PCIe Gen 5/6/7, UALink, or 400G/800G/1.6T Ethernet.
• Proven track record working directly with hyperscale or Tier-1 customers on optical integration, system bring-up, debug, and production deployment.
• Experience debugging high-speed serial interfaces and signal integrity challenges
• Strong lab skills: high-speed scopes, BERTs, optical test equipment, and link analyzers.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Electrical Engineering, Photonics, or Optical Engineering.
• Direct experience with Driver/TIA/ODSP, silicon photonics, and optical modules (OSFP, QSFP-DD, LPO, CPO).
• Familiarity with switch silicon architectures and scale-up/scale-out AI fabrics.
• Experience driving cross-functional escalations spanning silicon, firmware, optics, and platform software.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to engage from engineer to executive audiences.
• Scripting proficiency for test automation and data analysis