Hardware Design Engineering, Senior Director - Active Electric Cable / Smart Cable Module Business

About the role

We are hiring a Senior Director of Hardware Design Engineering to lead and scale Astera Labs' hardware design engineering organization across Active Electrical Cables (AEC), Smart Cable Modules (SCM), Silicon Evaluation Platforms (SVB/EVB), rack-scale products, and OEM/customer design enablement. This is a senior leadership role with full ownership of the hardware design function - encompassing electrical/PCB design, mechanical engineering, hardware validation, lab infrastructure, and customer hardware engineering support. You will build and lead a world-class, multidisciplinary engineering organization that takes products from concept through design, validation, qualification, and production release - while simultaneously enabling OEM customers and design partners to successfully integrate Astera Labs silicon into their own products. Your teams will own the complete hardware realization of Astera Labs' connectivity products and serve as the technical bridge between Astera Labs' silicon capabilities and the broader ecosystem of customers building next-generation AI infrastructure. You will be a key member of the engineering leadership team, driving technology roadmaps, making critical technical and business trade-off decisions, and partnering closely with silicon, firmware, signal integrity, NPI, manufacturing, quality, product management, sales, and customer-facing teams. You'll also be responsible for attracting, developing, and retaining top engineering talent as Astera Labs scales through hyper-growth.

Responsibilities

• Engineering Leadership & Organization Building
• Lead and scale Astera Labs' hardware design engineering organization, encompassing:
• Electrical/PCB Hardware Design Engineering - schematic capture, high-speed PCB/flex/substrate layout, power delivery, component engineering for cable modules through rack-scale systems
• Mechanical Engineering - connector design, housing/enclosure design, thermal management, cable strain relief, chassis/sheet metal, form factor compliance, tolerance analysis
• Hardware Validation Engineering - product-level electrical, mechanical, environmental, and reliability qualification and validation across all product lines
• Lab Engineering & Infrastructure - test lab buildout, capital equipment strategy, measurement capability, and lab operations
• Customer Hardware Engineering & OEM Enablement - reference design support, design reviews, integration guidance, and hands-on technical engagement with OEM customers adopting Astera Labs silicon
• Build, mentor, and lead a team of engineering managers and senior individual contributors across all hardware design disciplines
• Define organizational structure, hiring plans, career development frameworks, and technical competency models as the team scales
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, rigorous design practices, cross-functional collaboration, and customer-centric technical support
• Represent the hardware design engineering function in executive reviews, board updates, and strategic planning sessions
• Technology Roadmap & Strategic Planning
• Define and manage the hardware technology roadmap for AEC, SCM, Silicon Evaluation Platforms, and rack-scale products - aligned with silicon roadmaps, customer requirements, market trends, and competitive dynamics
• Drive technology strategy decisions across interconnect architectures, PCB/substrate technologies, connector platforms, cable constructions, thermal solutions, chassis architectures, and form factors
• Identify and invest in next-generation hardware techno

Benefits

Additional Information

Astera Labs (NASDAQ: ALAB) provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through purpose-built connectivity solutions. By collaborating with hyperscalers and ecosystem partners, Astera Labs enables organizations to unlock the full potential of modern AI. Astera Labs' Intelligent Connectivity Platform integrates CXL®, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe®, and UALink™ semiconductor-based technologies with the company's COSMOS software suite to unify diverse components into cohesive, flexible systems that deliver end-to-end scale-up, and scale-out connectivity. The company's custom connectivity solutions business complements its standards-based portfolio, enabling customers to deploy tailored architectures to meet their unique infrastructure requirements. Discover more at www.asteralabs.com . About Astera Labs Astera Labs is the connectivity backbone of rack-scale AI infrastructure. Our Active Electrical Cables (AEC), Smart Cable Modules (SCM), Silicon Evaluation Platforms, and rack-scale products deliver purpose-built, high-speed connectivity for the world's most demanding AI clusters. As our product portfolio expands in complexity, performance, and volume - and as OEM customers increasingly adopt Astera Labs silicon into their own designs - we need a senior engineering leader to build and scale the hardware design engineering organization that creates industry-defining products and enables our customers' success.

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