Principal Electrical Design Engineer - San Jose, California, United States
$185,000 - $240,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 4 September 2026 by the employer — open 11 days.
This role encompasses complex hardware systems including chassis boards, NIC cards, PCIe Gen6 platforms, and 800G Ethernet products.
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. The focus includes complex hardware systems such as 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 the hardware engineering organization.
- 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 with high-speed digital, analog, and mixed-signal circuitry.
- Lead root-cause analysis of complex hardware issues across high-speed interfaces, power delivery, clocks, resets, and control paths.
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 board-level electrical engineering expertise.
- 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.
- Expert power integrity and PDN design knowledge including advanced sequencing, decoupling strategies, transient response optimization, and power architecture tradeoffs.
- 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.
- Experience leading server chassis or system board design programs in dense, thermally constrained, high-availability environments.
- 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, including contributions to industry specifications or standards bodies.
- Scripting and automation proficiency in Python or similar languages for lab automation, measurement analysis, hardware characterization workflows, and design flow optimization.
Skills: board-level hardware, PCIe Gen6, 800G Ethernet, signal integrity, power delivery network
This role has been open 11 days — well below the 118-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
90
|
Median days open
118 d
|
Median salary
$196k
|
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 (90 roles · 33 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 2 | 90 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 14 | 5741 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 32 d | 118 d (−86 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $196k |
Skills observed across this category: board-level hardware, PCIe Gen6, 800G Ethernet, signal integrity, power delivery network
Who's hiring in this category
- NVIDIA · 12 open roles · median 159 d
- Qualcomm · 12 open roles · median 159 d
- AMD · 9 open roles · median 78 d
- Keysight Technologies · 7 open roles · median 108 d
- Marvell Technology · 6 open roles · median 169 d
- Etched · 4 open roles · median 161 d
How we counted: 90 open Hardware Systems Engineering (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 33 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 15 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.