Applied AI Intern

Team: Applied AI — Non-Silicon
Location: San Jose, California
Employment type: Internship

About the role

Astera Labs is looking for an Applied AI Intern to help build practical AI capabilities outside the company’s ASIC and silicon-development workflows. You will work with the Applied AI team, task leads, and cross-functional stakeholders to turn ambiguous problems into useful prototypes and dependable solutions.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys moving from problem definition to implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration. You will have the opportunity to apply full-stack machine learning and generative AI programming, system design, and agent design to projects that improve efficiency and create measurable value for internal teams and stakeholders.

What you’ll do

Understand a problem, clarify requirements, define success criteria, and translate them into an actionable project plan.
Design and prototype machine learning, generative AI, or agentic solutions for non-silicon use cases.
Build, test, deploy, debug, and validate a project end to end, including end-user testing.
Move solutions through scoping, prototyping, user feedback, maintenance, and governance.
Use metrics and stakeholder feedback to evaluate impact, improve quality, and identify next steps.
Communicate progress, risks, tradeoffs, and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical partners.
Drive your work independently while seeking feedback early and collaborating effectively across the Applied AI team.
Document project outcomes, future use cases, and recommendations for continued development.

What you bring

Hands-on experience through coursework, research, personal projects, or prior work involving programming, machine learning, generative AI, or software systems.
Interest in applying AI to real operational or business problems—not only building models in isolation.
Exposure to system design, agent design, software development, testing, deployment, or debugging.
Ability to learn quickly, work through ambiguity, and turn feedback into concrete improvements.
Strong ownership, organization, and follow-through, with the ability to set and meet milestones.
Clear written and verbal communication and a collaborative approach to working with stakeholders.

What success looks like

By the end of the internship, you will have owned a meaningful project from scope through delivery, deployed a useful prototype or solution, demonstrated measurable outcomes, and clearly explained its impact and future path. You will contribute to a culture of building quickly, learning from feedback, and evangelizing practical AI adoption.

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.