(Sr.) Principal Engineer - Field Applications - San Jose, California, United States
$205,000 - $260,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 25 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
This Senior Principal Engineer - Field Applications role involves serving as a technical partner to customers deploying Astera Labs’ high-speed connectivity solutions, specifically for Ethernet and PCIe products in AI infrastructure platforms.
What you'll do
- Lead technical engagements with strategic customers from architecture definition through deployment and production support.
- Own customer escalations, establish clear action plans, and drive issues to timely closure.
- Present design recommendations, bring-up results, and technical tradeoffs to customer engineering and leadership teams.
- Develop and execute system-level debug plans for Ethernet and PCIe connectivity issues, including link training, interoperability, compliance, and performance.
- Analyze physical-layer behavior, signal-integrity symptoms, error logs, lab data, and system telemetry to isolate root causes.
- Collaborate with sales and product management to capture customer requirements and shape application strategies for AI infrastructure designs.
What you'll need
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 12–20 years of experience in field applications engineering, system engineering, product engineering, or a related domain.
- Deep hands-on experience with Ethernet and/or PCIe systems, high-speed SerDes, link training, interoperability, and compliance.
- Strong understanding of physical-layer concepts, signal integrity, board-level bring-up, lab instrumentation, and system-level debug.
- Demonstrated ability to lead complex customer escalations, debug, and communicate technical concepts clearly.
- Ability to work onsite in San Jose and travel to customer and partner locations as needed.
Nice to have
- Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
- Experience with PCIe Gen 5/6/7, high-speed Ethernet, retimers, redrivers, signal-conditioning and scale-up, scale-out solutions.
- Familiarity with server, accelerator, switch, NIC, storage, or other data-center platform architectures.
- Experience developing reference designs, validation plans, interoperability strategies, or customer-facing technical documentation.
Skills: Field Applications Engineering, high-speed connectivity, Ethernet, PCIe, signal integrity, customer support
This role has been open 34 days — well below the 52-day median for Applications FAE roles.
Applications FAE · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
78
|
Median days open
52 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 (78 roles · 23 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 15 | 78 |
| Median days open | 49 d | 52 d (−3 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $183k |
Skills observed across this category: Field Applications Engineering, high-speed connectivity, Ethernet, PCIe, signal integrity, customer support
Who's hiring in this category
- Astera Labs (this employer) · 15 open roles · median 49 d
- Synopsys · 14 open roles · median 13 d
- Qualcomm · 7 open roles · median 73 d
- Keysight Technologies · 6 open roles · median 31 d
- Broadcom · 4 open roles · median 59 d
- Microchip Technology · 4 open roles · median 44 d
How we counted: 78 open Applications FAE (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 23 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 28 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. Figures refresh nightly.