Platform Solutions Engineer Intern (EE)

About the role

Location: Cary, North Carolina, United States

About the role

Astera Labs is seeking a Platform Solutions Engineer Intern to help translate customer, partner, and system requirements into practical hardware and software platform solutions. You will work at the intersection of electrical engineering, product and platform strategy, customer engineering, product applications, interoperability, and ecosystem collaboration.

You will gain hands-on experience understanding data-center system architectures, evaluating connectivity configurations, supporting platform demonstrations and validation, analyzing technical tradeoffs, and communicating recommendations to engineering and business audiences. You will own a scoped project that produces a reusable analysis, platform configuration, interoperability summary, automation improvement, or technical presentation.

What you will do

• Study server and AI infrastructure architectures, including CPU, GPU, memory, storage, networking, and the connectivity paths between them.
• Translate customer, partner, product, and system requirements into platform assumptions, architecture diagrams, interface requirements, configuration options, and technical questions.
• Analyze connectivity solutions involving technologies such as PCIe, CXL, Ethernet, and related high-speed interconnects.
• Support platform reference designs, application block diagrams, bill-of-materials or configuration reviews, and solution documentation.
• Help evaluate tradeoffs involving performance, bandwidth, latency, compatibility, scalability, power, cost, availability, and total cost of ownership.
• Support demonstrations, proof-of-concept builds, interoperability activities, and technical readiness reviews with engineering, product applications, field applications, and ecosystem partners.
• Develop or improve Python, shell, spreadsheet, or other automation for data collection, configuration checks, test execution, log parsing, result reporting, or technical analysis.
• Collect and analyze hardware, firmware, software, telemetry, performance, and interoperability data to identify issues and support root-cause investigations.
• Help reproduce system issues, document expected and observed behavior, track action items, and coordinate technical follow-up across teams.
• Prepare concise technical summaries, comparison tables, presentations, diagrams, FAQs, and other materials that make complex platform behavior easier to understand.
• Maintain structured trackers for partner configurations, validation status, supported combinations, open issues, and upcoming milestones.
• Collaborate with Product & Platform, Hardware Engineering, Firmware, System Validation, Sales Engineering, Marketing, Business Development, and ecosystem partners to turn technical findings into actionable recommendations.
• Document the completed project, analysis, methodology, results, and recommendations; present the outcome to engineering and cross-functional stakeholders.

What you bring

• Enrollment in a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D. program in electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science, or a related field.
• Coursework, research, or project experience in computer architecture, electronics, embedded systems, networking, hardware/software integration, or system engineering.
• Foundational understanding of server architecture, digital hardware, high-speed interfaces, or data-center systems.
• Programming, scripting, data analysis, or automation experience with Python, C, C++, shell, spreadsheets, or a comparable toolset.
• Ability to learn complex technical systems, organize ambiguous requirements, analyze tradeoffs, and communicate practical recommendations.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts to engineering, product, and business audiences.
• Strong ownership, curiosity, practical judgment, and willingness to collaborate across functions.

Preferred qualifications

• Familiarity with PCIe, CXL, Ethernet, SerDes, UALink, NVLink, or other high-speed connectivity technologies and standards.
• Experience with hardware bring-up, lab validation, interoperability testing, platform debug, protocol analysis, or telemetry.
• Familiarity with CPU, GPU, memory, storage, networking, rack-scale, or AI infrastructure architectures.
• Experience building dashboards, comparison frameworks, configuration trackers, data analyses, or technical presentations.
• Exposure to product requirements, reference designs, BOM or configuration management, customer use cases, or partner engineering workflows.
• Familiarity with observability, telemetry, performance counters, error reporting, or software tools used to evaluate hardware platforms.

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.