Product Integration, Senior Principal - Active Electric Cable / Smart Cable Module Business

About Astera Labs

Astera Labs is the connectivity backbone of rack-scale AI infrastructure. Our Active Electrical Cables (AEC), Smart Cable Modules (SCM), Silicon Evaluation Platforms, and rack-scale products deliver purpose-built, high-speed connectivity for the world's most demanding AI clusters. As our product portfolio expands in complexity, performance, and volume — and as OEM customers increasingly adopt Astera Labs silicon into their own designs — we need a senior engineering leader to build and scale the hardware design engineering organization that creates industry-defining products and enables our customers' success.

We are hiring a Senior Principal Engineer, AEC Product Integration to serve as the senior technical integration leader for Astera Labs' Active Electrical Cable product line. This is a deeply technical, hands-on individual contributor role at the most senior level — responsible for ensuring that every element of an AEC product (silicon, firmware, PCB/substrate, cable assembly, connector, mechanical, thermal, and signal integrity) comes together into a fully validated, production-ready, customer-qualified product.

You will be the single technical point of accountability for AEC product integration — the person who sees the complete picture, identifies gaps between disciplines, resolves cross-domain technical conflicts, and drives closure on the hardest integration challenges. You'll work at the intersection of hardware design, firmware, signal integrity, mechanical engineering, test, manufacturing, and customer applications — ensuring that Astera Labs' AEC products meet or exceed performance, quality, and reliability targets at scale.

Reporting to the AVP of AEC/SCM Hardware Engineering, you'll partner closely with engineering leads across all disciplines, as well as NPI, QA, validation, manufacturing, and customer engineering teams. You won't manage a large organization — instead, you'll lead through technical depth, cross-functional influence, and the ability to drive complex multi-variable problems to resolution.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Product Integration

• Own the technical integration of AEC products across all constituent domains: ASIC/retimer silicon, firmware, PCB/flex circuit, cable assembly, connector interface, mechanical housing, thermal management, and signal integrity

• Define and maintain the AEC product integration plan — identifying all cross-domain interfaces, dependencies, risks, and validation checkpoints from early design through mass production release

• Serve as the central technical authority who ensures all subsystem specifications are mutually consistent, physically realizable, and collectively deliver the target product performance

• Drive integration trade-off decisions when competing requirements across domains (e.g., signal integrity vs. mechanical, thermal vs. cost, firmware timing vs. test coverage) require resolution

• Own the AEC product-level specification, ensuring it flows coherently from system-level customer requirements down to component-level specifications for each engineering team

Signal Integrity & Electrical Performance Integration

• Ensure end-to-end channel performance meets target specifications across the full AEC link — from host connector, through PCB/substrate, retimer silicon, flex/cable medium, and far-end connector

• Partner with Signal Integrity engineers to validate channel models, S-parameter budgets, eye diagram margins, and compliance to relevant standards (IEEE 802.3ck/dj, OIF CEI-112G/224G)

• Drive resolution of signal integrity issues that span multiple domains — e.g., connector-to-PCB transition optimization, cable-to-substrate impedance matching, crosstalk between differential pairs in dense cable bundles

• Define and enforce electrical interface specifications at every integration boundary (silicon-to-substrate, substrate-to-cable, cable-to-connector, connector-to-host)

Hardware & Mechanical Integration

• Coordinate the physical integration of retimer silicon, passive components, flex circuits or PCBs, cable assemblies, and mechanical housings into a unified AEC product form factor

• Work with Mechanical Engineering to ensure connector mating, latching, strain relief, bend radius, thermal dissipation, and form factor compliance are achieved within customer and standards requirements

• Drive resolution of mechanical-electrical conflicts (e.g., routing density vs. housing volume, thermal solution vs. weight/form factor, strain relief vs. cable flexibility)

• Review and approve mechanical drawings, 3D models, tolerance stacks, and assembly sequences for AEC products

Firmware & Silicon Integration

• Partner with Firmware Engineering to ensure retimer/re-driver firmware initialization, link training, equalization, and diagnostic features integrate correctly with the AEC hardware platform

• Define firmware-hardware interface requirements — including power sequencing, thermal monitoring/throttling, I2C/CMIS register maps, and in-field diagnostic capabilities

• Drive debug and root-cause analysis of integration issues that span silicon, firmware, and hardware boundaries (e.g., link instability tied to power delivery transients, equalization failures tied to channel asymmetry)

• Ensure AEC products comply with relevant management interface standards (CMIS, SFF-8636, or proprietary host interfaces)

Test & Validation Integration

• Define the AEC product-level validation plan — ensuring comprehensive coverage across electrical performance, mechanical durability, environmental reliability, firmware functionality, and interoperability

• Partner with Test Engineering to specify end-of-line production test requirements that validate all critical integration parameters without excessive test time

• Drive cross-domain failure analysis when product-level test failures cannot be attributed to a single subsystem — marshaling resources across SI, hardware, firmware, and mechanical teams to identify root cause

• Own the integration test phase during NPI — defining entry/exit criteria, managing issue trackers, driving closure, and making go/no-go recommendations for production readiness

Customer Integration & Interoperability

• Serve as the senior technical interface for AEC product integration with customer platforms — understanding host ASIC requirements, switch/NIC compatibility, rack-level cabling architectures, and system-level thermal/mechanical constraints

• Drive interoperability testing and debug with customer hardware, resolving link-level issues that may involve Astera Labs' AEC, customer host silicon, or system-level environmental factors

• Translate customer integration feedback into actionable engineering requirements and design improvements for current and future AEC generations

• Support customer qualification activities by providing technical data packages, integration guides, and direct engineering engagement

Cross-Functional Technical Leadership

• Lead cross-domain integration reviews and design reviews — bringing together hardware, firmware, SI, mechanical, test, manufacturing, and quality engineers to assess readiness at each product milestone

• Identify and escalate integration risks early — proposing mitigation plans and driving pre-emptive resolution before issues reach production or customer sites

• Establish and document integration best practices, lessons learned, and reusable frameworks that improve efficiency across successive AEC product generations

• Mentor engineers across disciplines on systems-level thinking and cross-domain integration methodology

Manufacturing & NPI Integration

• Partner with Manufacturing Engineering and NPI teams to ensure that the integrated AEC product design is manufacturable, testable, and scalable at volume

• Participate in DFM/DFA/DFT reviews with a focus on integration-critical process steps (e.g., cable-to-substrate attachment, retimer placement, overmolding, connector alignment)

• Support production ramp by driving resolution of integration-related yield issues, process excursions, or field failures that span multiple manufacturing operations

• Define incoming inspection and in-process integration verification checkpoints to catch cross-domain defects early in the production flow

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related technical discipline

• 15+ years of experience in hardware product development, with substantial focus on high-speed interconnect, cable assembly, transceiver/module, or mixed signal/digital system integration

• Demonstrated track record as a technical integration leader — owning the full-product convergence across multiple engineering disciplines on complex hardware products

• Deep understanding of high-speed serial link design (56G/112G PAM4 or above), including signal integrity, channel modeling, equalization, and link budgeting

• Strong working knowledge of PCB/substrate design, cable assembly construction, connector technology, and mechanical packaging for high-speed interconnects

• Experience with firmware/hardware integration on products containing retimers, re-drivers, or PHY-layer silicon

• Proven ability to drive complex cross-functional debug and root-cause analysis spanning electrical, mechanical, firmware, and manufacturing domains

• Experience supporting customer integration, interoperability testing, and platform-level qualification

• Excellent communication skills — able to distill complex multi-domain trade-offs for both technical peers and executive audiences

• Willingness to travel (20–30%) to CM sites in Asia and customer locations as required

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on high-speed interconnects, signal integrity, or mixed-signal systems

• Direct hands-on experience with Active Electrical Cables (AEC), Active Copper Cables (ACC), Direct Attach Cables (DAC), or Smart Cable Modules (SCM)

• Experience integrating products based on retimer or linear re-driver ASICs (e.g., Astera Labs Aries, Broadcom, Marvell, or equivalent)

• Deep familiarity with relevant standards: IEEE 802.3ck (100G/lane), 802.3dj (200G/lane), OIF CEI-112G, CEI-224G, SFF-8636, CMIS, OSFP, QSFP-DD

• Experience with 224G/lane (1.6T) interconnect technology and next-generation cable/connector architectures

• Background in system-level integration for hyperscale data center or AI infrastructure applications

• Experience with contract manufacturers in Asia for cable assembly or module production

• Familiarity with environmental/reliability testing standards (GR-468, Telcordia, IEC) for interconnect products

• Mandarin language proficiency for direct technical engagement with Asian manufacturing partners

• Experience with simulation tools (HFSS, ADS, CST, or equivalent) and lab measurement equipment (oscilloscopes, BER testers, VNAs, TDR)

Base salary range is $230,000 to $255,000 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives and benefits.