Field Applications Engineer, New College Graduate

Location: San Jose, California, United States
Employment type: Full-time
Role type: New College Graduate
Organization: Customer Experience — Field Applications Engineering

About Astera Labs

Astera Labs provides purpose-built connectivity solutions for rack-scale AI infrastructure. Our Intelligent Connectivity Platform helps customers build flexible, high-performance systems by connecting processors, memory, accelerators, and networking components across the data center.

About the role

Astera Labs is seeking a Field Applications Engineer, New College Graduate, to help establish trusted technical partnerships with leading cloud service providers, server and network OEMs, and other customers using Astera Labs’ portfolio of connectivity products. You will work with customers to understand their requirements, propose solutions that provide clear value, and support hands-on design-in, bring-up, validation, and debug activities.

This is a hands-on, customer-facing engineering role. You will learn from experienced field applications and engineering teammates while developing the technical judgment, communication skills, and product knowledge needed to guide customers from early evaluation through successful deployment. You will also bring customer feedback back to internal engineering teams to help shape product improvements and roadmap priorities.

What you will do

• Learn the architecture, operation, configuration, and use cases of Astera Labs connectivity products, including high-speed PCIe, Ethernet, CXL, and related data-center technologies.

• Support customer and partner engagements by understanding technical requirements, answering product questions, proposing practical solutions, and helping communicate the value of Astera Labs products.

• Assist with customer design-in activities, technical presentations, product demonstrations, schematic and board reviews, evaluation-board enablement, and solution documentation.

• Participate in silicon and system bring-up, interoperability, validation, qualification, and debug in the lab and at customer sites as needed.

• Reproduce and triage hardware, firmware, software, and system-level issues; collect logs and measurements; and coordinate root-cause analysis with internal engineering teams.

• Use oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, traffic generators, and other lab equipment, along with Python scripts and Linux tools, to investigate link behavior, performance, and failure modes.

• Work with embedded firmware at the SerDes, SoC, or MCU level when needed to isolate and communicate system issues.

• Partner with product applications, hardware, firmware, systems, validation, product management, sales, and business development teams across the product lifecycle.

• Capture customer feedback and translate it into clear technical requirements, product improvements, documentation updates, and roadmap input.

• Communicate progress, risks, technical findings, and recommendations clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What you bring

Required qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, completed by the start date.

• Up to two years of relevant experience, including internships, co-ops, academic projects, or hands-on engineering work.

• Fundamentals in computer architecture, high-speed digital systems, connectivity, or hardware/software integration.

• Experience with at least one scripting or programming language, such as Python, and familiarity with Linux-based development or debug environments.

• A structured, persistent approach to troubleshooting complex technical problems.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts clearly.

• A collaborative, customer-oriented mindset and enthusiasm for learning new technologies.

Preferred qualifications

• Hands-on or academic experience with PCIe, CXL, Ethernet, NVMe, SerDes, signal integrity, server architecture, AI infrastructure, or related high-speed connectivity technologies.

• Familiarity with NRZ/PAM4-based links, including high-speed Ethernet, or with PCIe/CXL link training and optimization.

• Hands-on experience with evaluation boards, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, traffic generators, or other lab equipment.

• Experience automating tests, collecting and analyzing data, or building repeatable debug workflows in Python or a similar language.

• Exposure to embedded firmware, software/firmware build environments, gcc/Make, Git, or GitHub.

• Familiarity with schematic capture, PCB layout, or simulation/modeling tools such as Cadence, Altium, Keysight ADS, or IBIS-AMI workflows.

• Experience preparing technical documentation, presenting project results, or supporting a customer, lab, or engineering team.

Why join us

As a new college graduate at Astera Labs, you will take ownership of meaningful work from the start while learning from experienced engineers and customer-facing technical leaders. You will gain broad exposure to how connectivity products move from architecture and evaluation through integration, validation, customer enablement, and deployment in AI infrastructure.

Compensation

Salary range is $145,000 to $155,000 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.