Senior Principal Engineer, Security Architect

Astera Labs; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible time off in the US

Parental leave

401K

Retirement and pension plans

Competitive medical, dental and vision

Job summary

Astera Labs seeks a Senior Principal Engineer, Security Architect to define security architecture across silicon, firmware, cloud services, and IT. You will set architectural direction and lead secure-by-design reviews in a hyper-growth semiconductor company enabling rack-scale AI infrastructure.

You will partner with engineering, product security, GRC, and IT leadership to raise the security bar in a fast-moving environment and mentor teams across the organization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/EE or related field.
• MS/PhD in security preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive security engineering/architecture experience.

Responsibilities

• Define end-to-end security architecture across product (silicon/firmware) and enterprise (cloud/IT).
• Lead threat modeling, attack surface analysis, and secure design reviews for new products and platforms.
• Drive SDL practices across design, implementation and validation gates.
• Architect zero-trust, identity, network, and data protection controls across Microsoft-centric enterprise environments.
• Mentor engineers and architects; translate direction into pragmatic roadmaps and measurable outcomes.

Skills

Security architecture

Threat modeling

Secure development lifecycle

Zero-trust

Cloud security

Azure / Entra / M365

Identity and access management

Cryptography / hardware security

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/EE

MS/PhD in security

Tools

Azure Security Tools

M365 / Entra

Job description

Astera Labs is building the connectivity backbone of the AI era, and the platforms we ship power the world’s largest AI clusters

As Senior Principal Engineer, Security Architect, you’ll be the most senior technical authority defining how security is designed into everything we build — from silicon and firmware to the cloud services, tools, and enterprise systems that support them

This is a hands-on, deeply technical architect role for someone who wants to shape security at a hyper-growth semiconductor company enabling rack-scale AI infrastructure

You’ll set architectural direction, drive threat modeling and secure-by-design reviews across product and IT, and partner with engineering, product security, GRC, and IT leadership to raise the security bar in a fast-moving environment

Security Architecture & Strategy

• Define and own the end-to-end security architecture across product (silicon, firmware, systems) and enterprise (cloud, SaaS, IT) domains
• Establish security reference architectures, design patterns, and standards that scale across teams and product lines
• Partner with engineering and IT leaders to align architectural direction with business, product, and compliance priorities

Threat Modeling & Secure-by-Design

• Lead threat modeling, attack surface analysis, and security design reviews for new products, features, and platforms
• Drive secure development lifecycle (SDL) practices, including requirements, design, implementation, and validation gates
• Evaluate cryptography, key management, secure boot, attestation, and supply chain integrity approaches for hardware and firmware

Enterprise & Cloud Architecture

• Architect zero-trust, identity, network, and data protection controls across the Microsoft-centric enterprise (Azure, Entra, M365) and SaaS ecosystem
• Guide secure design of build, CI/CD, developer, and EDA/tooling environments
• Define standards for logging, telemetry, and detection engineering inputs in partnership with security operations

Partnership & Technical Leadership

• Serve as a trusted advisor to engineering, product, IT, and GRC leadership on complex security trade-offs
• Translate architectural direction into pragmatic, prioritized roadmaps and measurable outcomes
• Mentor engineers and architects across the organization, elevating security capability company-wide

Benefits

• Flexible time off in the US
• Parental leave
• 401K
• Retirement and pension plans
• Competitive medical, dental and vision plans

• Deep knowledge of cryptography, identity and access management, network security, and modern threat models (e.g., MITRE ATT&CK)
• 12+ years of progressive experience in security engineering and architecture across product and/or enterprise domains
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field
• Hands-on experience with cloud security architecture (Azure preferred) and Microsoft enterprise environments (Entra, M365, Active Directory)
• Demonstrated expertise designing secure architectures spanning hardware/firmware, software, cloud, and enterprise IT
• Proven ability to influence engineering and executive stakeholders and drive complex, cross-functional security initiatives
• Advanced degree (MS or PhD) in a security-related discipline
• Industry certifications such as CISSP-ISSAP, SABSA, TOGAF, Azure Security Engineer/Architect, or equivalent demonstrated experience
• Experience in the semiconductor, hardware, or hyperscale infrastructure industry, including familiarity with PCIe, CXL, or high-speed connectivity technologies
• Experience with secure boot, hardware root of trust, attestation, confidential computing, and supply chain security
• Familiarity with regulatory and industry frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST, and data privacy regulations