Principal Electrical Design Engineer

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs’ Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL®, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe®, and UALink™ semiconductor-based technologies with the company’s COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up, and scale-out connectivity. The company’s custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com . Job Description Principal Electrical Design Engineer Board Hardware Engineering About the Role We are seeking a Principal Electrical Design Engineer to define and drive the architecture, design, and technical strategy for advanced board-level hardware across next-generation networking and high-performance connectivity platforms. This role encompasses complex hardware systems including chassis boards, NIC cards, PCIe Gen6 platforms, and 800G Ethernet products. This is a principal-level technical leadership role requiring deep domain expertise, strategic vision, and organizational influence. You will set the technical direction for board architecture, establish design methodologies, drive innovation in high-speed system design, and serve as the top technical authority across multiple programs. You will partner with and influence silicon, SI/PI, mechanical, firmware, manufacturing, system, and executive teams to deliver industry-leading products from concept through production and beyond. Key Responsibilities Technical Strategy and Architecture Leadership Define and own the board-level hardware architecture and technical roadmap across multiple product lines and platform generations Establish design standards, methodologies, and best practices that scale across the hardware engineering organization Drive architectural tradeoff decisions for complex multi-layer PCBs integrating high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry, balancing performance, cost, schedule, and manufacturability Get involved and drive discussions on stack-up strategy, impedance optimization and other SI relates development work Own power delivery architecture strategy including multi-rail regulation topologies, advanced sequencing schemes, transient response optimization, protection philosophies, and power budgeting across platform generations Define and evolve hardware implementation strategies for management and control interfaces such as I2C, SPI, GPIO, MDIO, and debug and observability architectures Electrical Design Ownership Own schematic capture and board-level design for complex multi-layer PCBs with high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry Serve as the technical authority for board-level hardware development across high-performance server and connectivity platforms, including NIC cards, PCIe add-in cards, and chassis-integrated hardware Provide technical oversight and approval for schematic capture and board-level designs across multiple designs Lead component strategy and qualification roadmaps in partnership with suppliers, sourcing, and manufacturing teams Drive design-for-excellence initiatives including DFT, DFM, and DFR to systematically improve manufacturability, yield, reliability, and production readiness across all programs Bring-Up, Validation, and Debug Leadership Define and own the bring-up and validation strategy for new hardware platforms, establishing frameworks that improve first-pass success rates across the organization Lead root-cause analysis of the most complex and escalated hardware issues across high-speed interfaces, power delivery, clocks, resets, and control paths Drive systemic improvements to debug methodologies, validation coverage, and failure analysis processes Partner with firmware, software, and system teams to define and validate initialization sequences, telemetry, diagnostics, and platform-level functionality Own corrective action frameworks and feed lessons learned into design standards and review processes Cross-Functional Impact Serve as the technical point of escalation and decision-maker for hardware design challenges across the organization Work closely with SI/PI, mechanical, thermal, firmware, system, and manufacturing teams throughout the product lifecycle, driving alignment and resolving cross-domain technical conflicts Interface with silicon vendors and internal ASIC teams at a strategic level on platform architecture, bring-up, errata resolution, compliance, and next-generation readiness Mentor and develop senior and lead engineers, raising the technical bar across the hardware engineering team Lead and contribute to design reviews and architectural reviews, and technical publications that advance the team’s collective expertise Represent the hardware engineering organization in executive reviews, customer engagements, and industry forums as needed Required Qualifications Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field; advanced degree preferred 12+ years of progressive hardware design experience with deep expertise in board-level electrical engineering and demonstrated technical leadership across multiple product generations 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 including impedance control, differential p