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 the Role
Astera Labs is seeking an experienced Director, Product Line Management - Custom Silicon to lead strategic customer engagements for our growing Custom Solutions business. This is a senior individual contributor role, equivalent in scope to a Director-level position, with no direct people management responsibility.
This is not a traditional product management role focused on a single merchant product line. You will serve as the business and technical leader for custom silicon opportunities—partnering directly with hyperscalers, AI labs, and emerging AI infrastructure companies to understand their architectures, identify opportunities, define engagement and commercial models, and guide programs from concept through production.
What You’ll Do
- Own product and business strategy for Astera Labs’ Custom Solutions portfolio.
- Build trusted relationships with hyperscalers, AI infrastructure providers, AI labs, and other strategic customers.
- Understand customer architectures and translate technical and business requirements into differentiated custom silicon solutions.
- Define solution roadmaps, product strategies, and customer engagement models for custom silicon programs.
- Lead customer roadmap discussions, executive business reviews, and technical strategy sessions.
- Partner with Architecture, ASIC Design, Firmware, Software, Validation, Product Applications, Sales, Marketing, and Operations to execute customer programs.
- Develop business cases, commercial frameworks, pricing strategies, and lifecycle plans for custom engagements.
- Drive competitive analysis, market intelligence, and positioning across the custom silicon landscape.
- Create customer-facing materials, including solution briefs, white papers, executive presentations, and technical messaging.
- Identify and cultivate new opportunities that expand Astera Labs’ presence across hyperscale, AI, and cloud infrastructure customers.
- Influence cross-functional execution from initial opportunity assessment through production ramp, without direct people-management responsibility.
What Success Looks Like in the First Year
- Secure multiple custom silicon design wins.
- Build a strong pipeline of qualified strategic customer opportunities.
- Expand Astera Labs’ footprint with hyperscalers, AI companies, and emerging infrastructure providers.
- Establish durable customer relationships that create opportunities for repeat business.
- Leverage Astera Labs’ existing silicon IP and platform capabilities to win increasingly complex custom programs.
Required Qualifications
- BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical discipline.
- 12+ years of experience in semiconductor product management, product line management, technical marketing, applications engineering, business development, or a similar customer-facing technical leadership role.
- Experience leading custom silicon or advanced semiconductor products from concept through production.
- Strong understanding of semiconductor architectures and AI infrastructure, networking, compute, storage, or memory technologies.
- Experience working directly with hyperscalers, AI companies, cloud service providers, or major system OEMs.
- Demonstrated success developing custom silicon opportunities and securing semiconductor design wins.
- Strong understanding of competitive positioning, market analysis, product strategy, and commercial models.
- Exceptional communication, executive presentation, and customer-engagement skills.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical and commercial stakeholders across functions without direct reporting authority.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with custom ASICs, AI accelerators, networking silicon, storage silicon, memory silicon, SmartNICs, DPUs, XPUs, or other custom infrastructure silicon.
- Knowledge of chiplet architectures, HBM, advanced packaging, heterogeneous computing, and high-performance semiconductor design.
- Experience developing customer-facing technical collateral and strategic messaging.
- Experience developing commercial structures, pricing strategies, and business cases for semiconductor programs.
- MBA or advanced engineering degree.
Salary range is $195,000 to $250,000 depending on experience, level, and business need. This role may be eligible for discretionary bonus, incentives, and benefits.
We know that creativity and innovation happen more often when teams include diverse ideas, backgrounds, and experiences, and we actively encourage everyone with relevant experience to apply, including people of color, LGBTQ+ and non-binary people, veterans, parents, and individuals with disabilities.
Skills Required
- BS or MS in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related technical discipline.
- 10+ years experience in Product Applications Engineering, Systems Engineering, Customer Engineering, Field Applications Engineering, or related customer-facing semiconductor role.
- Experience supporting advanced semiconductor or custom silicon products from architecture through production.
- Strong understanding of high-speed interconnect technologies including Ethernet (through 800G), PCIe, PAM4, SerDes, DSPs, DAC, AEC, ACC, AOC, and related hardware technologies.
- Experience with silicon bring-up, post-silicon validation, and system-level debugging.
- Strong Linux debugging and troubleshooting experience.
- Experience writing Python or C/C++ scripts for automation, diagnostics, firmware validation, or lab workflows.
- Proven experience working directly with hyperscalers, cloud providers, enterprise customers, or major OEMs.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and technical leadership skills.
- Experience supporting AI infrastructure platforms or high-performance computing systems.
- Familiarity with custom ASIC development and customer-specific silicon solutions.
- Experience with firmware, embedded software, or FPGA validation.
- Understanding of networking, storage, memory, or accelerator architectures.
- Experience creating customer-facing technical documentation, training materials, and application notes.
- Experience supporting executive customer reviews and technical design discussions.
Astera Labs Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Astera Labs and has not been reviewed or approved by Astera Labs.
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Healthcare Strength — Health plans are described as competitive and employer-subsidized, covering medical, dental, and vision for employees and dependents. Company materials and listings consistently emphasize strong core healthcare coverage.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Flexible time off is highlighted alongside paid company holidays, with guidance indicating generous PTO when coordinated with teams. Documented policies also point to robust time-off structures across locations.
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Equity Value & Accessibility — Stock-based compensation is a meaningful part of total pay, with RSUs and an employee stock purchase plan noted as part of the package. Public-company status enhances perceived value and accessibility of equity components.
Astera Labs Insights
What We Do
Astera Labs Inc., a fabless semiconductor company headquartered in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, is a leader in purpose-built connectivity solutions for data-centric systems throughout the data center. Partnering with leading processor vendors, cloud service providers, seasoned investors, and world-class manufacturing companies, Astera Labs is helping customers remove performance bottlenecks in data-intensive systems that are limiting the true potential of applications such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company’s product portfolio includes system-aware semiconductor integrated circuits, boards, and services to enable robust CXL, PCIe, and Ethernet connectivity.
