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

About the role

We are hiring a Director of Hardware Design Engineering - AEC / SCM & China Customer Support to establish and lead Astera Labs' Shanghai hardware design center. This role has dual mission ownership: AEC & SCM Product Design - Primary ownership of Active Electrical Cable and Smart Cable Module hardware design execution, from architecture through production release, leveraging proximity to China-based cable assembly and module contract manufacturers China Customer Engineering Support - Serving as Astera Labs' front-line hardware engineering partner for China-based customers (hyperscale cloud providers, server/switch OEMs, AI system integrators, cable/module manufacturers) who are integrating Astera Labs silicon into their own products or deploying Astera Labs AEC/SCM products in their infrastructure Active Electrical Cables and Smart Cable Modules are the highest-volume, fastest-growing products in Astera Labs' portfolio - connecting GPUs, switches, and accelerators across AI clusters at 112G and 224G per lane. Simultaneously, China represents one of the world's largest and fastest-growing markets for AI infrastructure, with a dense ecosystem of OEM customers who require local, responsive hardware engineering support. You will build and lead a multidisciplinary hardware engineering team in Shanghai - spanning electrical/flex/substrate design, mechanical engineering, hardware validation, and customer applications engineering - driving AEC/SCM product design excellence while serving as the trusted technical partner for Astera Labs' China customer base. Reporting to the Senior Director of Hardware Design Engineering, you'll operate with significant autonomy on AEC/SCM product execution and China customer engagement while maintaining strategic alignment on technology roadmap, design standards, and customer priorities with the global engineering organization.

Responsibilities

• Shanghai Design Center Leadership
• Establish, build, and lead Astera Labs' Shanghai hardware design center as the company's primary hub for AEC/SCM product design and China customer engineering support
• Recruit, hire, and develop a high-caliber multidisciplinary engineering team in Shanghai, including:
• High-speed electrical/flex/substrate design engineers
• Mechanical engineers (connector, housing, thermal, cable interface)
• Hardware validation engineers
• Customer applications/hardware support engineers
• Lab/test engineers
• Define organizational structure, hiring roadmap, and operating model for the Shanghai center - balancing product design execution, customer support responsibilities, and global alignment
• Establish lab infrastructure in Shanghai to support AEC/SCM prototype bring-up, characterization, validation, failure analysis, and customer demonstration/interoperability testing
• Drive engineering culture that emphasizes design rigor, manufacturing awareness, customer responsiveness, and tight collaboration with Santa Clara headquarters and the Taiwan design center
• Serve as the senior Astera Labs engineering leader in China - representing the company with customers, manufacturing partners, suppliers, and industry stakeholders in the region
• AEC Hardware Design
• Electrical & Substrate Desig

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 . Director, Hardware Design Engineering - AEC / SCM & China Customer Support Reports to: Senior Director, Hardware Design Engineering Location: Shanghai, China - Astera Labs Shanghai Design Center 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 AEC and SCM product lines scale rapidly to meet hyperscale AI infrastructure demand - and as China-based OEM customers, hyperscale cloud providers, and system integrators increasingly adopt Astera Labs silicon and connectivity products - we are establishing a Shanghai-based hardware design center to drive product development, manufacturing collaboration, and customer engineering support in close proximity to our manufacturing partners and China-based customers.

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