Principal Product Application Engineer - PCIe
Astera Labs · San Jose, CA · 1 mo ago
Engineering$171k–$220k/yrFull-time
Key Responsibilities
- Serve as the primary technical resource for customers during pre-sales evaluation and post-sales deployment of Aries PCIe retimers
- Deliver technical presentations, product training, and demonstrations to customer engineering teams
- Build trusted advisor relationships with key accounts and drive product adoption
- Lead root cause analysis and debugging of complex PCIe signal integrity and protocol issues in customer systems
- Support customer lab bring-up, characterization, and validation activities
- Develop and execute test plans to reproduce and resolve customer-reported issues
- Create application notes, reference designs, and best practices guides for PCIe system implementation
- Contribute to product documentation including datasheets and user guides
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Partner with product management and engineering to translate customer feedback into product requirements
- Support sales teams with technical expertise during customer engagements
- Represent the voice of the customer in internal roadmap and feature discussions
Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field
- 8+ years of experience in applications engineering, technical support, or system engineering roles
- Strong understanding of PCIe architecture, protocol, and electrical specifications (Gen4/Gen5/Gen6)
- Hands-on experience with lab equipment including oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and BERT tools
- Experience debugging high-speed serial interfaces at both the physical and protocol layers
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts
- Develop and modify firmware using C to implement features, optimize performance, and resolve technical issues
- Travel to customer sites worldwide to provide on-site technical support, conduct system integration, and drive issue resolution
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with PCIe retimers, redrivers, or similar connectivity components
- Familiarity with server, storage, or GPU system architectures
- Background in signal integrity analysis and simulation tools
- Scripting proficiency (Python, TCL) for test automation and data analysis
- Prior experience working directly with hyperscale or enterprise data center customers
- Track record of creating high-quality technical documentation and application notes