Principal Electrical Design Engineer - San Jose, California, United States
$185,000 - $240,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 4 September 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This role defines and drives the architecture, design, and technical strategy for advanced board-level hardware across networking and high-performance connectivity platforms, including chassis boards, NIC cards, PCIe Gen6 platforms, and 800G Ethernet products.
What you'll do
- Define and own the board-level hardware architecture and technical roadmap across multiple product lines.
- Establish design standards, methodologies, and best practices for hardware engineering.
- Drive architectural tradeoff decisions for complex multi-layer PCBs integrating high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry.
- Own power delivery architecture strategy, including multi-rail regulation topologies and advanced sequencing schemes.
- Own schematic capture and board-level design for complex multi-layer PCBs.
- Define and own the bring-up and validation strategy for new hardware platforms.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering or a closely related field.
- 12+ years of progressive hardware design experience with deep expertise in board-level electrical engineering.
- Extensive track record of architecting and delivering production hardware for server, networking, storage, or high-performance compute systems.
- Expert-level experience with high-speed SerDes-based systems supporting Ethernet, PCIe, or related protocols, including PCIe Gen5/Gen6 and 400G/800G Ethernet system design.
- Expert understanding of signal integrity fundamentals including impedance control, differential pair routing, channel loss optimization, crosstalk mitigation, and layout review for high-speed interfaces.
- Expert power integrity and PDN design knowledge including advanced sequencing, decoupling strategies, transient response optimization, and power architecture tradeoffs at system level.
- Mastery of industry-standard schematic capture and PCB design and review tools such as Cadence Allegro or OrCAD.
- Proven track record leading hardware bring-up and debug of complex platforms using oscilloscopes, protocol analyzers, and advanced lab instrumentation.
Nice to have
- Experience defining architecture for NIC cards, accelerator cards, or other PCIe add-in card platforms across multiple generations.
- Experience leading server chassis or system board design programs.
- Deep expertise with 800G Ethernet and emerging 1.6T electrical interfaces and system integration challenges.
- Experience architecting solutions using retimers, redrivers, advanced clocking architectures, and high-speed interconnect subsystems.
- Expertise in compliance and validation workflows for PCIe and Ethernet platforms.
- Experience driving contract manufacturer relationships, production ramp strategies, and yield optimization.
- Scripting and automation proficiency in Python or similar languages for lab automation, measurement analysis, hardware characterization workflows, and design flow optimization.
- Experience influencing product strategy and roadmap decisions at the organizational level.
Skills: board-level hardware, PCIe Gen6, 800G Ethernet, signal integrity, power delivery network
This role has been open 25 days — well below the 104-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
86
|
Median days open
104 d
|
Median salary
$197k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Astera Labs | All employers we track in this specialty (86 roles · 33 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 3 | 86 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 12 | 5934 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 25 d | 104 d (−79 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $197k |
Skills observed across this category: board-level hardware, PCIe Gen6, 800G Ethernet, signal integrity, power delivery network
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 13 open roles · median 173 d
- Qualcomm · 10 open roles · median 173 d
- AMD · 8 open roles · median 74 d
- Keysight Technologies · 5 open roles · median 131 d
- Lumentum · 4 open roles · median 1 d
- Astera Labs (this employer) · 3 open roles · median 25 d
How we counted: 86 open Hardware Systems Engineering (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 33 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 29 Sept 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.