Optical FW/SW Engineer – Tech Lead

Role Overview

We are looking for an Optical FW/SW Engineer, Tech Lead for design, development, and validation of embedded firmware and supporting software for Astera Labs’ next-generation optical products. You will build software for optical engines, optical modules, and emerging near-packaged optics (NPO) and co-packaged optics (CPO) solutions, spanning real-time control, calibration, telemetry, diagnostics, and high-speed link optimization.

This role sits at the intersection of embedded systems, optics, and hardware. You will own critical technical problems from architecture through silicon and hardware bring-up to production readiness, partnering with optical, electrical, DSP, systems, and manufacturing teams. Your work will help enable reliable, scalable connectivity for rack-scale AI infrastructure as Astera Labs advances the transition to higher-bandwidth optical interconnects.

Key Responsibilities

• Optical Firmware Architecture and Development
• Architect, develop, optimize, and maintain production-quality embedded firmware for optical engines, PIC/EIC platforms, and optical modules.
• Implement software in C on embedded processors using bare-metal or RTOS-based designs.
• Develop Python scripts and tools for unit-testing, configuration, automation, characterization, manufacturing test, and data analysis.
• Optical Control and Performance Optimization
• Develop control algorithms for modulator operation, automatic power control, temperature compensation, calibration, and link adaptation.
• Implement telemetry, diagnostics, monitoring, and fault-handling features that improve optical-link health, reliability, and serviceability.
• Optimize firmware for latency, power efficiency, control stability, and performance across evolving optical architectures.
• Hardware Bring-Up, Product Validation, and Quality
• Lead firmware and hardware bring-up, including board initialization, peripheral integration, lab debugging, and root-cause analysis.
• Integrate firmware with photodetectors, TIAs, ADCs, DACs, sensors, drivers, DSPs, and hardware control interfaces such as I2C and SPI.
• Partner with optical, electrical, DSP, systems, and validation teams to characterize, tune, and qualify optical products.
• Establish unit-testing strategies and maintain automated tests that improve firmware quality, coverage, and release confidence.
• Apply disciplined version-control, code-review, documentation, and release practices throughout the development lifecycle.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Physics, or a related technical field.
• 5–8 years of experience developing embedded firmware or software for optical, photonics, communications, semiconductor, or other high-reliability products.
• Strong programming skills in C and Python, with experience developing software for microcontroller platforms.
• Experience with RTOS-based embedded development, embedded programming methods, hardware interfaces, and low-level device control.
• Proven experience with unit testing, version control, debugging, and hardware bring-up.
• Ability to analyze and resolve complex problems across firmware, hardware, optical control algorithms, and system-level behavior.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with optical module management, CMIS, telemetry, diagnostics, or control requirements.
• Experience with optical engines, pluggable optics, silicon photonics, PIC/EIC integration, NPO, or CPO.
• Knowledge of lasers, modulators, photodetectors, TIAs, thermal tuning, wavelength control, calibration, and high-speed optical link behavior.
• Familiarity with JTAG, oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, optical test equipment, and protocol analyzers.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, strong cross-functional collaboration, and the ability to drive an ambiguous problem from concept to production.

Salary range is $160,000 to $200,000 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives and benefits.