Product Application Engineer PCIe/CXL
Astera Labs
$185,000 - $240,000 / year
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Description
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.
Role Overview
As an Astera Labs Principal Product Application Engineer, you will need to provide technical guidance to customers to overcome design challenges, generate collateral for existing and new products, and drive innovation by providing insightful feedback to other internal teams to continuously improve products and processes.
Astera Labs is seeking a Principal Product Applications Asia Region Lead with 8+ years of experience supporting the development and design-in of semiconductor products for PCIe/CXL. Regional leads focus on development, debugging, and design-in activities related to customers in a designed geography, and help coordinate with local development teams in Astera Labs Headquarters. This role will be supporting our China region. Role is required to work approximately from 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM PST to enable real-time collaboration with stakeholders in the Asia Pacific time zone.
Basic Qualifications
- Strong academic and technical background in electrical engineering. At minimum, a Bachelor’s in EE is required, Master’s is preferred.
- Minimum of 3 years’ experience in designing in complex SoC/silicon products with a high speed (preferably PCIe) interface.
- Entrepreneurial, open-minded behavior and can-do attitude. Think and act with the customer in mind!
- Full professional proficiency in Mandarin (written and spoken) required to communicate directly with Asia region customer contacts
Required Experience
- Strong working knowledge of PCIe LTSSM at a physical layer level, associated standards, and debug. Most recent experience with PCIe 5.0 at a minimum, some experience with 6.0/CXL preferred.
- Silicon/System bring-up and debug experience in customer systems.
- Technical ownership of issue resolution: Driving and directing internal teams toward issue resolution. Driving communication with customers, FAEs, and sales team members
- Firsthand experience with lab equipment such as protocol analyzers/exercisers, high-speed oscilloscopes, or BERTs.
- Comfort working with software/firmware associated with semiconductor products, such as: Firmware development with C-language, scripting with Python or other equivalent programming languages.
Preferred experience
- Triaging complex customer reported issues which require taking into account multiple layers of conditions. For instance, silicon, firmware, hardware board design, and system environment.
- Experience with common data center BMC implementation, and BIOS configuration
- Development/support for PCIe or Ethernet Switch or Retimer products.
- PCIe compliance testing methodology and troubleshooting.
- Understanding of Data Center systems like Servers, JBOGs/JBODs, Networking switches/routers/interconnects etc.
- Mandarin language proficiency preferred. Candidate must be able to speak Mandarin to effectively communicate with our China region customers and team members.
- Candidate will need to be open work approximately from 12:00 PM to 9:00 PM PST to enable real-time collaboration with stakeholders in the Asia Pacific time zone
Base salary range is $185,000 to $240,000 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives and benefits.
We know that creativity and innovation happen more often when teams include diverse ideas, backgrounds, and experiences, and we actively encourage everyone with relevant experience to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, veterans, parents, and individuals with disabilities.
Benefits
- bonus
About this role
Astera Labs is building connectivity infrastructure for AI at scale, and this Principal Product Application Engineer role puts you at the technical front lines with customers deploying PCIe and CXL solutions. You'll own the relationship between Astera Labs and customers in the China region, diagnosing complex design challenges, debugging silicon and system behavior, and feeding customer insights back to product and engineering teams. This isn't a support ticket role—you're expected to drive issue resolution across multiple technical layers, from firmware and hardware board design to data center system architecture, and to own the technical narrative with customers, FAEs, and internal stakeholders.
The position demands deep PCIe expertise, particularly at the physical layer and LTSSM level, with hands-on experience bringing up silicon in customer environments. You'll need to be comfortable with lab gear like protocol analyzers and high-speed oscilloscopes, and capable of writing or debugging firmware and scripts to isolate problems. Experience with PCIe 5.0 is the floor; CXL, switches, retimers, and compliance testing are strong differentiators. Because you'll be the regional technical lead, fluent Mandarin (written and spoken) is required, and you'll work a 12 PM–9 PM PST schedule to align with Asia Pacific time zones.
This role suits someone with 8+ years in semiconductor design-in who thinks like an engineer but communicates like a customer advocate. You need at least a bachelor's in electrical engineering (master's preferred) and a track record of owning complex technical problems end-to-end. The salary range is $185,000 to $240,000, with eligibility for bonus and benefits.
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$185,000 to $240,000 per year
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