Tech Lead Automation Engineer

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.

The role

We are seeking a hands-on Tech Lead Automation Engineer with a passion for infrastructure and SG&A automation to lead the development of the internal platforms that let the rest of the company move faster. You'll take ownership of the systems that automate access, tracking, and administrative workflows across engineering and the business — deciding what gets built, building a meaningful share of it yourself, and setting the technical direction as that footprint grows.

This is a builder's role, not a purely architectural one: you'll be writing code, designing schemas, and shipping features personally, using AI coding platforms like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot as core tools in your daily work.

What you'll do

Platform Ownership

• Take technical ownership of our internal automation platforms end-to-end — architecture, data model, background sync/scheduling, and roadmap.

• Design and ship full-stack features: backend services, role-based access control, approval workflows, and frontend UI.

• Maintain and extend integrations with the external systems these platforms depend on — SaaS tools, cloud infrastructure, and internal directory/identity services.

New System Development

• Design and build new operational systems from the ground up in response to emerging business needs, including systems of record for tracking assets and entitlements, and dashboards that give teams visibility into usage, cost, and status.

• Grow existing tooling in these areas from functional-but-narrow into fuller self-service products.

SG&A & Cross-Functional Automation

• Partner with IT, HR, and Finance-adjacent stakeholders to automate SG&A workflows — onboarding/offboarding, approval routing, audit logging, and access reviews — while those teams continue to own the underlying policy.

• Build identity and access integrations (SSO/OAuth2) and RBAC models that satisfy audit requirements without slowing teams down.

Engineering Practices & AI-Assisted Delivery

• Own database schema evolution and maintain automated test coverage as the codebase and its scope grow.

• Use AI coding platforms as a daily force multiplier for scaffolding, testing, and delivery speed.

• Set and enforce engineering standards (separation of concerns, commit discipline, logging) as the codebase scales beyond a single owner.

What we're looking for

• BS/MS in Computer Science with 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.

• Demonstrated ownership of a production web application end-to-end: backend (Python; FastAPI or similar), relational database design (PostgreSQL, SQL, schema migrations), and frontend work.

• Experience integrating with enterprise SaaS APIs (e.g. Atlassian suite, Microsoft 365, GitHub/Bitbucket) and cloud infrastructure APIs (compute/storage, job schedulers).

• Working knowledge of identity and access management — RBAC, SSO/OAuth2, and group provisioning via a directory service (LDAP or equivalent).

• Experience designing systems of record or inventory/asset-tracking tools, and the dashboards that surface their data to different audiences.

• Exposure to licensing, entitlement, or lifecycle-tracking systems (software licenses, IP/asset lifecycle, or similar compliance-adjacent tracking) is a strong plus.

• Fluency with AI-assisted coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot) as part of a daily development workflow.

• A strong bias toward automating manual, cross-functional processes, and comfort scoping those flows directly with non-technical stakeholders (IT, HR, Finance).

• A track record as a hands-on technical lead — someone who owns architecture decisions and personally builds a meaningful share of the system, not just one who delegates.

What strong candidates often look like

They've owned an internal platform end-to-end before — not just contributed features to one — and are as comfortable designing a database schema as they are debugging a flaky integration with a third-party API. They understand that access provisioning, asset tracking, and building insights are fundamentally the same problem — manual handoffs that should be code — and they get energy from turning that insight into a working system. They use AI coding tools fluently as part of how they build, not as an occasional aid. They can sit with an IT or Finance stakeholder, map out a manual process on a whiteboard, and walk away knowing exactly what to build — and they're just as comfortable being the only engineer on the project as they are pulling in help when the roadmap demands it.

Why this role is interesting

This is a rare chance to take full technical ownership of a live, actively used platform and decide where it goes next, while also getting a clean slate to stand up entirely new systems from scratch. You'll shape how the company automates the operational work that would otherwise fall to spreadsheets and manual approvals, with modern tools and a short, direct feedback loop between building something and seeing it used. The scope is broad by design: the same platform mindset that automates one workflow today extends naturally to the next — so the systems you build compound rather than living in isolation.

Salary range is $135,000 to $170,000 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.