Business Development Intern

About the role

• Business Development Intern
• Location: San Jose, California
• Employment type: U.S. internship
• Team: Business Development, Compute Connectivity Group

About the role

Astera Labs is a leader in semiconductor-based connectivity solutions that enable the scalability and performance required for modern cloud and AI infrastructure. The Business Development Intern will support the team that identifies market opportunities, develops customer and partner insights, and helps translate business needs into actionable priorities for Astera Labs' connectivity portfolio.

This is a hands-on opportunity to work at the intersection of technology, markets, customers, partners, and go-to-market strategy. You will collaborate with product, engineering, sales, field applications, and marketing partners to research industry developments, evaluate opportunities, and communicate clear recommendations to technical and business audiences.

What you'll do

• You will help shape the product strategy and commercial evaluation of high-speed scale-up switching silicon that connects thousands of AI accelerators (GPUs/XPUs) into a unified compute fabric.
• You will work closely with hardware architects, system verification teams, and go-to-market leaders to translate complex distributed AI demands into actionable product requirements.
• You will conduct market & competitive analysis in the following areas:
• Interconnect Protocol Benchmarking: Assist in tracking and mapping technical metrics (latency, bisection bandwidth, power dissipation, and die area) across PCIe Gen 6/7, UALink, and ESUN (Ethernet Scale-Up Networks).
• Use internal LLM-based market intelligence copilots to aggregate, parse, and benchmark PPA (Power, Performance, Area), latency overhead, and cost-per-gigabit metrics.
• Silicon Cost & Die-Size Tradeoff Modeling: Partner with hardware architects to run AI-assisted parametric models evaluating monolithic switch dies versus chiplet packaging economics.
• Competitive Intelligence Tracking: Help maintain comprehensive database tracking competitor switch roadmaps, transceiver capabilities, and silicon cost-per-gigabit versus standard and proprietary fabrics.
• You will conduct customer & workload analysis in the following areas:
• Distributed AI Workload Profiling: Study communication primitives of large language model (LLM) training (e.g., All-Reduce, All-to-All) to understand how switch tail-latency impacts Model Flops Utilization (MFU).
• Workload-to-Fabric Translation: Use AI-driven cluster traffic generators and simulation frameworks to model how massive distributed AI training workloads (e.g., Megatron-LM All-Reduce, All-to-All collectives, expert parallelism) strain switch buffer utilization and tail-latency budgets.
• Cluster Topology Modeling: Build lightweight economic and performance models (using Python/Excel) to evaluate how different scale-up switch topologies (torus, fat-tree, rail-optimized, 1-tier, 1.5-tier, 2-tier) scale across 1,000+ node GPU pods.
• Automated Telemetry Synthesis: Process raw simulation logs, emulation waveforms, and customer cluster bottleneck logs using internal analytics models to auto-populate and prioritize the next-generation switch feature backlog (PRD updates).
• Build structured analyses, trackers, dashboards, and presentations that make business and technical information easy to understand and act on.
• Support opportunity assessments and business cases by organizing relevant data, clarifying assumptions, and highlighting risks, tradeoffs, and next steps.
• Work cross-functionally with Product & Platform, Engineering, Sales, Field Applications Engineering, Marketing, and ecosystem partners to translate external insights into product, partner, or go-to-market actions.
• Prepare meeting materials, capture decisions and action items, and help maintain follow-up across internal and external engagements.
• Communicate technical concepts and their business implications clearly in written updates and presentations.
• Own a meaningful internship project from scope through delivery and share your findings and recommendations with stakeholders at the end of the internship.

What you bring

• Currently pursuing a Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD degree in business, business analytics, marketing, economics, engineering, computer science, or a related field.
• Strong analytical, research, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to organize and interpret market, business, and technical information.
• Clear written, verbal, and presentation skills, including the ability to synthesize complex topics for different audiences.
• Curiosity about semiconductors, cloud and AI infrastructure, data centers, connectivity technologies, and how technology decisions create business value.
• Ability to work collaboratively across technical and business teams, manage details, and follow through on commitments.
• Comfort working through ambiguity, asking thoughtful questions, and turning open-ended problems into structured next steps.
• Coursework, projects, or prior experience in market research, competitive analysis, business strategy, product management, partnerships, sales, or technical communications is helpful.

Preferred qualifications

• Familiarity with data center hardware or software ecosystems and technologies such as PCIe, CXL, Ethernet, ESUN, NVLink, or UALink.
• Experience creating business analyses, dashboards, presentations, or other structured reporting materials.
• Experience collaborating with engineering, product, sales, marketing, or external partner teams.

What you'll learn

• How business development teams evaluate market opportunities, customer needs, partner relationships, and adoption signals in a rapidly evolving technology market.
• How to connect technical capabilities with customer value, product strategy, and go-to-market priorities.
• How to communicate research findings and recommendations to technical, business, and leadership audiences.
• How cross-functional teams work together to bring semiconductor-based connectivity solutions to market.

Internship experience and compensation

Pay and benefits

This is a paid, hourly U.S. internship. The applicable hourly rate is determined as part of the offer process and specified in the offer letter, depending on education level ranges from $35/hour to $55/hour. U.S. interns currently receive a $500-per-week housing/relocation stipend for the duration of the internship. Interns participate in Early Career programming, including technical and professional-development sessions, community events, and an end-of-program project presentation.

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.