Senior Product Applications Engineer, Custom Silicon

Astera Labs; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 205,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Astera Labs is seeking a Sr Principal Product Applications Engineer to serve as the technical bridge between customers and our engineering teams, driving custom silicon programs from early architecture discussions through production deployment.

You will work with hyperscalers, AI labs, and infrastructure partners to translate requirements into actionable engineering work while collaborating with Product Management, ASIC Design, Firmware, Validation, and Software Engineering to ensure successful

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Electrical/Computer Engineering or CS.
• 10+ years in Product Applications/Systems Engineering or related customer-facing semiconductor role.
• Experience supporting advanced semiconductor or custom silicon from architecture to production.
• Strong knowledge of Ethernet (through 800G), PCIe, PAM4, SerDes, DSPs, DAC, AEC, ACC, AOC.
• Proven ability to work with hyperscalers and AI labs.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical interface for strategic customer programs.
• Develop trusted technical relationships with customer engineering teams and become a key advisor throughout the product lifecycle.
• Support customer engagements from architecture discussions through silicon bring-up, validation, production, and deployment.
• Lead complex customer debug efforts involving hardware, firmware, software, and system-level integration.
• Translate customer requirements and architecture feedback into actionable engineering requirements.
• Collaborate with Product Management, Architecture, ASIC Design, Firmware, Validation, and Software Engineering to drive customer success.
• Influence future silicon products by providing customer insights and technical feedback to engineering teams.
• Support technical escalations and drive issues to resolution across cross-functional teams.
• Develop automation and diagnostic tools using Python or C/C++ to improve engineering efficiency and customer support.
• Travel to customer sites as needed to support key design wins.

Skills

Customer engagement

System engineering

Linux debugging

Python scripting

C/C++ scripting

High-speed interconnects

Silicon bring-up

Technical leadership

Architecture collaboration

Education

BS/MS in Electrical Engineering / Computer Engineering / Computer Science

Tools

Python

C/C++

Verilog/VHDL

FPGA tooling

Linux debugging tools

Job description

Astera Labs is seeking a Sr Principal Product Applications Engineer to serve as the technical bridge between customers and our engineering teams, driving custom silicon programs from early architecture discussions through production deployment.

You will work with hyperscalers, AI labs, and infrastructure partners to translate requirements into actionable engineering work while collaborating with Product Management, ASIC Design, Firmware, Validation, and Software Engineering to ensure successful