Active Electrical Cable Module FW Engineer – Tech Lead
Astera Labs3 months ago
San Jose, CA, USASenior / Staff+
H1B sponsor
Base Salary
$169k - $200k/yr
Responsibilities
- Architect, develop, optimize, and maintain production-quality MCU firmware for active electrical and active copper smart cable modules.
- Implement C firmware on ARM-based STM32 or comparable microcontroller platforms using RTOS-based designs.
- Develop Python tools and scripts for test automation, configuration, characterization, manufacturing testing, and data analysis.
- Implement module power, thermal, configuration, signal-conditioning, calibration, upgrade, telemetry, diagnostics, fault-handling, and health-monitoring features.
- Integrate firmware with retimers, signal-conditioning devices, drivers, ADCs, DACs, sensors, I2C, SPI, and other hardware-control interfaces.
- Lead MCU, board, and module bring-up, including boot sequences, peripheral initialization, hardware diagnostics, and root-cause analysis.
- Debug issues across firmware, hardware, control algorithms, and high-speed links, and partner with cross-functional teams to characterize, tune, and qualify modules.
- Establish unit-testing strategies and maintain automated tests while applying version-control, code-review, documentation, and release practices.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field.
- 5–10 years of experience developing embedded firmware or software for smart cables, networking, communications, semiconductor, or other high-reliability products.
- Strong C and Python programming skills with experience on ARM-based STM32 or comparable microcontroller platforms.
- Experience with RTOS-based embedded development, embedded programming methods, hardware interfaces, and low-level device control.
- Experience with unit testing, version control, debugging, and hardware bring-up.
- Understanding of high-speed electrical physical-layer concepts, including signal integrity, channel behavior, equalization, and link training.
- Ability to resolve complex problems across firmware, hardware, control algorithms, and system-level behavior.
- Preferred experience with active electrical cables, active copper cables, retimers, signal conditioners, optical modules, CMIS or other module-management standards, telemetry, diagnostics, thermal management, power sequencing, and module calibration.
- Familiarity with JTAG, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and high-speed electrical test equipment.
- Demonstrated technical leadership, cross-functional collaboration, and ability to drive ambiguous problems from concept to production.
- Ability to work effectively with geographically diverse teams across different time zones.
Benefits
- The role may be eligible for a discretionary bonus, incentives, and benefits.
- Base salary is $169,000–$200,000 depending on experience, level, and business need.
About Astera Labs
Astera Labs builds semiconductor-based connectivity solutions and software that link CPUs, GPUs, memory, and storage for AI and cloud data centers, integrating CXL, PCIe, Ethernet, NVLink, and UALink. It offers standards-based and custom connectivity products alongside its COSMOS software suite, serving hyperscalers and server OEMs. Founded in 2017 and headquartered in San Jose, it is a public company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker ALAB.