Principal Product Applications Engineer - San Jose, California, United States
$207,000 - $230,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 7 October 2026 by the employer.
This role focuses on Scorpio product applications.
About the role
As a Principal Product Applications Engineer, you will facilitate the deployment of high-performance PCIe fabric solutions for rack-scale AI infrastructure. This role involves integrating Scorpio switches across demanding CPU, GPU, NIC, storage, and accelerator designs.
What you'll do
- Lead technical engagements with customers and partners to define Scorpio-based PCIe architectures.
- Develop reference designs, application guidance, and system-level collateral for customer adoption.
- Translate customer use cases into product requirements and integration plans.
- Drive system bring-up, debug, and interoperability across PCIe hosts, GPUs, NICs, and storage devices.
- Analyze link training, enumeration, performance, error handling, and system stability issues.
- Partner with architecture, design, firmware, validation, and applications teams to resolve complex issues.
What you'll need
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- 8–12 years of experience in product applications, systems engineering, firmware, or platform validation.
- Strong understanding of PCIe architecture, including link training, enumeration, configuration space, error handling, performance, and system interoperability.
- Experience with firmware development or debug, including ability to read code and interpret logs.
- Hands-on experience with system bring-up, lab debug, protocol analysis, and root-cause investigation.
Skills: PCIe fabric solutions, AI infrastructure, customer enablement, system bring-up, firmware debug, UCIe
This role has been open 0 days — well below the 60-day median for Applications FAE roles.
Applications FAE · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
79
|
Median days open
60 d
|
Median salary
$183k
|
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 (79 roles · 23 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 16 | 79 |
| Median days open | 54 d | 60 d (−6 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $183k |
Skills observed across this category: PCIe fabric solutions, AI infrastructure, customer enablement, system bring-up, firmware debug, UCIe
Who's hiring in this category
- Synopsys · 16 open roles · median 22 d
- Astera Labs (this employer) · 15 open roles · median 53 d
- Qualcomm · 7 open roles · median 82 d
- Keysight Technologies · 6 open roles · median 40 d
- Microchip Technology · 5 open roles · median 43 d
- Broadcom · 3 open roles · median 57 d
How we counted: 79 open Applications FAE (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 23 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 7 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. Figures refresh nightly.