Product Applications Engineer Intern (Scorpio)

Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

About the role

Astera Labs is seeking a Product Applications Engineer Intern to join the Scorpio Product Applications team. You will gain hands-on experience helping customers and partners evaluate, integrate, validate, and use high-speed connectivity solutions in data-center and AI infrastructure systems.

You will work with experienced engineers across Product Applications, Firmware, Systems Engineering, System Validation, Field Applications, and Product Line Management. Your work will combine technical learning with practical execution across evaluation boards, system bring-up, debugging, interoperability, technical documentation, and customer enablement. You will own a scoped project that produces a reusable analysis, debug workflow, automation improvement, technical collateral, or other deliverable that helps the team and its customers.

What you will do

• Learn Scorpio product architecture, common applications, evaluation platforms, and the tools used to configure, test, and diagnose systems.

• Support hands-on evaluation-board and lab activities, including system setup, firmware updates, configuration, link checks, health checks, and basic bring-up.

• Assist with debugging customer, partner, and internal issues by reproducing behavior, collecting logs and telemetry, analyzing link or system data, and documenting expected versus observed results.

• Work with high-speed connectivity technologies and system behaviors such as PCIe, CXL, SerDes links, link training, equalization, lane margining, performance, and recovery.

• Support interoperability and validation activities across hosts, accelerators, memory, storage, networking, and other platform components.

• Use scripts, SDKs, command-line tools, spreadsheets, or other automation to configure systems, run checks, collect data, parse logs, compare results, and reduce repetitive work.

• Help create and maintain technical collateral, application notes, user guides, configuration instructions, debug guides, presentations, diagrams, and other materials that make complex product behavior easier to understand.

• Track issues, experiments, supported configurations, validation status, open questions, and next steps in the appropriate engineering and project systems.

• Collaborate with Firmware, Hardware, Systems Engineering, Validation, Field Applications, Product Line Management, and other cross-functional partners to turn technical findings into clear recommendations.

• Communicate progress early, ask questions, document what you learn, and present your project results, issues, and next steps to technical and cross-functional audiences.

What you bring

• Enrollment in a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D. program in electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, or a related field.

• Coursework, research, or project experience in computer architecture, digital systems, embedded systems, networking, electronics, high-speed interfaces, or hardware/software integration.

• Foundational understanding of processors, memory, I/O, operating systems, firmware, device drivers, or data-center systems.

• Experience with programming, scripting, data analysis, or automation using Python, C, C++, shell, spreadsheets, or comparable tools.

• Ability to learn complex technical systems, organize ambiguous problems, analyze evidence, and communicate practical conclusions.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills and a collaborative, curious, and ownership-oriented approach.

Preferred qualifications

• Familiarity with PCIe, CXL, Ethernet, SerDes, UALink, NVLink, or other high-speed connectivity technologies.

• Experience with Linux, Git, command-line tools, APIs, SDKs, CLIs, telemetry, log analysis, or technical documentation.

• Hands-on experience with evaluation boards, lab equipment, firmware or software bring-up, system validation, interoperability testing, or hardware debug.

• Exposure to signal integrity, power integrity, link training, equalization, lane margining, performance testing, or system-level troubleshooting.

• Experience creating technical diagrams, comparison tables, application notes, user guides, presentations, or other engineering collateral.

• Familiarity with issue-tracking and collaboration workflows such as Jira, Confluence, or Microsoft Teams.

Compensation

Salary range is CAD $35 to $55 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives and benefits.

Equal opportunity

Astera Labs is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage anyone with relevant experience to apply.