Hardware Board Validation Engineering, Director - San Jose, California, United States
$238,500 - $265,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 30 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
Astera Labs is seeking a Director of Hardware Board Validation Engineering to lead the development, bring-up, and validation of board products that enable rack-scale AI infrastructure. The role guides products from concept and architecture through qualification and mass production across connectivity and memory product lines.
What you'll do
- Lead board validation strategy across product definition, architecture, component selection, schematic capture, layout review, bring-up, debug, optimization, qualification, and production release. - Define validation plans, coverage goals, risk assessments, schedules, and exit criteria for high-speed boards, add-in cards, modules, and system platforms. - Direct board bring-up, silicon/PCB debug, system characterization, margin analysis, and performance optimization across voltage, temperature, channel, and workload conditions. - Validate high-speed NRZ and PAM4 SerDes-based protocols, including PCIe Gen 3 and above, Ethernet 25G and above, and LPDDR4/5 or related memory interfaces. - Apply signal integrity, power integrity, and power architecture expertise across circuits, power distribution, connectors, sockets, and cables. - Partner with ASIC, post-silicon validation, firmware, systems, mechanical, thermal, quality, compliance, manufacturing, and customer engineering teams.
What you'll need
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering or a related technical field. - 12 - 15+ years of relevant experience, consistent with Astera Labs’ standardized Director level. - Technical management experience leading hardware design, validation, or system engineering teams. - Experience with system-level board design from component selection and schematic capture through board bring-up, debug, optimization, validation, and production release. - Background in high-speed board design for enterprise, data center, server, storage, networking, or AI infrastructure systems.
Nice to have
- Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. - Experience with PCIe add-in cards, CEM cards, paddle cards, active electrical cables, servers, JBOD/JBOG systems, networking switches or routers, interconnects, or optical platforms. - Proficiency with schematic capture and PCB layout tools such as Cadence and Altium, including working knowledge of Cadence Allegro for design review. - Experience with FPGA- or MCU-based hardware design, including pin mapping, device selection, and evaluation of alternative SKUs against system requirements. - Experience designing complete high-speed channels that include ICs, sockets, connectors, cables, and customer system interfaces. - Experience partnering with silicon characterization and post-silicon validation teams to ensure device performance is achievable in customer systems. - Experience working with contract manufacturers, offshore manufacturing partners, mechanical and thermal teams, PCB vendors, quality, compliance, and supplier organizations.
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 53-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1021
|
Median days open
53 d
|
Median salary
$154k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Astera Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (1021 roles · 102 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 5 | 1021 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 17 | 6292 · 146 employers |
| Median days open | 139 d | 53 d (+86 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $154k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 75 open roles · median 39 d
- KLA Corporation · 64 open roles · median 51 d
- Teradyne · 60 open roles · median 39 d
- NVIDIA · 50 open roles · median 70 d
- Applied Materials · 49 open roles · median 67 d
- AMD · 44 open roles · median 56 d
How we counted: 1021 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 102 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 27 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.