(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 role involves serving as a trusted technical partner to customers deploying Astera Labs’ high-speed connectivity solutions, leading critical customer support for Ethernet and PCIe products, and translating system requirements into reliable, production-ready designs.
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 emerging AI infrastructure designs.
What you'll need
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 8–20 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 44 days — well below the 58-day median for Applications FAE roles.
Applications FAE · Serdes Highspeed
|
Open roles in category
80
|
Median days open
58 d
|
Median salary
$185k
|
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 (80 roles · 22 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 16 | 80 |
| Median days open | 54 d | 58 d (−4 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $185k |
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) · 16 open roles · median 54 d
- Synopsys · 16 open roles · median 23 d
- Qualcomm · 7 open roles · median 83 d
- Keysight Technologies · 6 open roles · median 41 d
- Microchip Technology · 5 open roles · median 44 d
- Broadcom · 3 open roles · median 58 d
How we counted: 80 open Applications FAE (Serdes Highspeed) roles from 22 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 8 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.