Platform Software Diagnostics Intern

Astera Labs · San Jose, CA · Internship · On-site

Join the Platform Software Diagnostics team within Hardware Engineering and work at the boundary of software and hardware. You’ll help create practical tools for board and chip bring-up, production testing, validation, and data-driven debugging across Astera Labs’ product lines.

This internship is designed for someone who enjoys learning by doing: reading a specification, writing code, connecting to real hardware, running a test, investigating the result, and improving the tool or workflow. You’ll work alongside experienced engineers and contribute to projects that turn low-level device behavior into reliable, understandable diagnostics.

• Develop and improve diagnostic utilities in C for board and chip bring-up, including register access, initialization, device discovery, and device-health checks.
• Read schematics, specifications, register descriptions, and test output to understand expected hardware behavior and diagnose issues.
• Write Python utilities and test automation to make validation, data collection, and debugging more repeatable.
• Use Raspberry Pi-based lab systems and development tools to interact with boards, connectivity modules, and other hardware under test.
• Create or maintain tests for production and validation workflows, helping identify failures earlier and improve test coverage.
• Reproduce hardware/software issues, form hypotheses, run focused experiments, analyze evidence, and document findings.
• Collaborate with engineers across diagnostics, validation, production, and related hardware/software teams to communicate results and deliver practical fixes.
• Participate in code reviews, issue tracking, technical discussions, and documentation that make the team’s work easier to maintain and scale.
• Present your project, results, and key learnings at the end of the internship.

Additional opportunities

Depending on project needs and your interests, you may also

• Investigate test results and failure logs, improving parsing, reporting, and data visualization so engineers can understand issues faster.
• Contribute to regression and infrastructure projects, such as unit-test or pytest enablement, Jenkins workflows, time-series test data, or software-release automation.

• Hands-on experience with C, Python, or another programming language through coursework, projects, research, or prior experience.
• Curiosity about how software interacts with physical systems and a willingness to learn from schematics, specifications, registers, and test output.
• Comfort working in a Linux development environment and using Git-based workflows.
• A methodical approach to debugging: forming hypotheses, running focused tests, analyzing evidence, and documenting what you learn.
• Clear written and verbal communication, with the ability to collaborate across software and hardware disciplines.
• Ownership, persistence, and a practical mindset in an environment where the first attempt may not work.

• Embedded software, device drivers, bare-metal development, or low-level debugging.
• I2C, SPI, PCIe, CXL, SerDes, signal-integrity concepts, or other hardware interfaces.
• Raspberry Pi, lab automation, test equipment, or semiconductor/networking hardware.
• Python test automation, pytest, log parsing, data analysis, or dashboard development.
• Jenkins or other continuous-integration and regression systems.

Internship experience and compensation

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 form $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.

Astera Labs builds connectivity solutions and software that help power modern AI infrastructure. Our platform software connects low-level device behavior, diagnostics, telemetry, validation, and fleet-scale manageability so customers can identify issues quickly and keep critical systems running.