Product Quality Engineer Intern

Location: San Jose, California
Employment type: U.S. internship
Work arrangement: Fully in-office

About the role

As a Product Quality Engineer Intern, you will help ensure that Astera Labs semiconductor and hardware products meet high standards for quality, reliability, performance, and customer experience. You will work alongside product quality, product engineering, field applications, hardware, validation, test, firmware/software, operations, and supplier teams across new product introduction, reliability qualification, customer returns, failure analysis, and continuous improvement.

This is a hands-on opportunity to apply your coursework to semiconductor quality and reliability. You will learn how engineering teams use lab measurements, production data, customer information, and structured quality processes to identify failure mechanisms, protect customers, and improve products. You will receive mentorship, contribute to meaningful work, and communicate your results to technical stakeholders.

What you’ll do

• Learn Astera Labs products, quality systems, reliability practices, lab procedures, and customer-return workflows.

• Support reliability-qualification activities, including qualification-plan reviews, stress conditions, sample and lot planning, vendor coordination, hardware readiness, ATE screening, stress monitoring, and aging or drift analysis.

• Help review schematics, layouts, test hardware, firmware/test-pattern readiness, and bench setup for qualification and product-quality investigations.

• Assist with safe lab bring-up and measurements using equipment such as oscilloscopes, VNA, BERT/BER, power supplies, DMMs, and thermal equipment, as appropriate to the project.

• Support customer-return and RMA investigations by reviewing returned units, customer system logs, Jira metadata, serialization, test history, lot history, and other evidence needed to maintain traceability.

• Perform or assist with visual inspection, functional testing, commonality analysis, production-data checks, and chip-level system testing using compliance or evaluation boards.

• Help investigate failure mechanisms through data analysis, power-cycle and temperature testing, TX/RX or signal-quality checks, and other non-destructive or destructive analysis performed with experienced engineers.

• Collaborate with Product Quality, Product Engineering, Field Applications, Hardware, Firmware/Software, Validation, Test Engineering, Operations, suppliers, and contract manufacturers to isolate root causes and define corrective actions.

• Contribute to 4D/8D reports, corrective-action evidence, failure-analysis records, qualification reports, customer-friendly documentation, and monthly failure or quality summaries.

• Maintain clear updates in Jira, FA tracking systems, and related documentation so that evidence, decisions, communications, and next steps remain traceable.

• Support process improvements such as RMA checklists, failure-isolation decision trees, instrument checklists, data-capture templates, or quality dashboards.

• Prepare clear technical documentation and a final presentation that explain your approach, findings, impact, and learning.

What you bring

• Current enrollment in a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD program in electrical engineering, computer engineering, materials science, computer science, or a related technical field.

• Strong technical fundamentals and evidence of applying them through coursework, laboratory work, research, internships, co-ops, senior design, hackathons, or personal projects.

• Interest in semiconductor products, product quality, reliability, failure analysis, hardware/software systems, manufacturing, or engineering validation.

• Ability to build, test, debug, analyze, and explain technical work—not simply list tools or technologies.

• Familiarity with at least one programming or scripting language, such as Python, C/C++, or MATLAB, through coursework or projects.

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, attention to detail, curiosity, and willingness to learn quickly.

• Interest in working with measurements, statistics, production or test data, visualization, and reproducible engineering workflows.

• Clear written and verbal communication and comfort collaborating across multiple engineering, operations, supplier, and customer-facing teams.

• Commitment to safe, careful, and organized work in a laboratory environment.

• Ability to work on-site in San Jose and contribute effectively within a team.

Preferred experience includes coursework, research, or projects involving semiconductor testing, reliability or qualification, ATE, failure analysis, PCIe, Ethernet, CXL, signal integrity, firmware qualification, computer architecture, data analysis, or hardware/software integration.

We value the quality, ownership, and impact of your work more than a particular school, course title, or tool list. If you meet many of the qualifications but not every item, we encourage you to apply.

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.

Inclusive workplace

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.