Director of Hardware Electrical Engineering - Astera Labs

As a Director of Hardware Electrical Engineering at Astera Labs, you will join our dedicated Hardware Engineering team working alongside ASIC Engineering. Your team will be responsible for designing boards that incorporate Astera Labs' diverse range of connectivity and memory products that are widely used by leading cloud service providers, server manufacturers, and network OEMs. You will be leading design team in every stage of design, from concept to mass production.

In addition to your core responsibilities, you will have the opportunity to drive innovation within the organization by providing insightful feedback to internal teams. Your expertise and suggestions will contribute to the continuous improvement of our products and processes. You may also collaborate on or even lead activities that are closely related, such as manufacturing, customer engagement, and post-production support.

This role provides opportunities for direct interaction with key customers. You will have the chance to solicit their input on form factors and propose comprehensive board products that meet their specific needs. We are looking for an ideal candidate who brings industry experience, possesses innovative thinking, and demonstrates a high level of expertise in their field. Moreover, you should exhibit a proactive "do what it takes" attitude, always ready to assist and contribute wherever necessary to effectively solve problems and achieve successful outcomes.

You will be leading a group of very talented individuals in a dynamic and fast-paced environment. Being a startup - it is a hands-on position and in addition to leading you'll be expected to step in and lend a hand / own projects based on need/experience.

Based in Santa Clara, this position requires an in-person presence, offering a unique opportunity to impact our global operations directly.

Basic Qualifications

• Strong academic and technical background in electrical engineering.

• Bachelor's in EE is required; Master's is preferred.

• Technical management experience

Required Experience

• Minimum of 10 years' experience in leading design team (system-level board design, from component selection and schematic capture through board bring-up, debug, optimization, and validation).

• Experience working in dynamic, fast-paced environment

• Strong cross-functional collaboration

• Strong background in high-speed board design techniques and methodologies, preferably in the enterprise and data center system space, such as PCIe add-in cards, servers, JBOGs/JBODs, networking switches/routers/interconnects, optics, active electrical cables, etc.

• Knowledge of schematic capture and PCB layout tools from Cadence, Altium, and others.

• Working knowledge of Allegro layout tool (for reviewing designs)

• Working knowledge of power architecture in both circuit (DC/DC POL converters) and distribution (power integrity)

• Understanding of signal and power integrity challenges and solutions

• Designing systems with high speed NRZ/PAM4 SerDes-based protocols such as PCIe (3.0 and above), Ethernet (25G and above), etc. and/or memory interfaces such as (LP)DDR4/5.

• Strong experience in board bring-up and validation

• Silicon/PCB bring-up and debug experience.

• Track record of taking products from concept to mass production

• Experience working with contract manufacturers, pcb vendors, and other external suppliers

Preferred experience

• Startup experience

• Working with off-shore CMs

• Working with mechanical and thermal teams to create achievable system design specifications.

• Hardware design around FPGAs and/or MCUs, including pin mapping and evaluation of different SKUs against a list of hardware requirements.

• Experience designing PCIe/CEM cards or paddle cards/active copper cable applications.

• Designing complete high-speed channels which may include IC sockets, connectors, and cables.

• Working with silicon characterization/validation teams to ensure device performance is readily achievable in customer systems.

• Technical writing skills to generate clear, precise documentation such as hardware specifications and user's guides for internal and customer-facing audiences.

• Experience in "adjacent" areas such as manufacturing, quality, compliance.