Principal Hardware Engineer, Precision Instrumentation

About Astera Astera is a private foundation on a mission to steer science and technology toward a better future. We believe the coming years will bring an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advancement as exponential progress in AI converges with central advances in other fields to accelerate innovation. This inflection point provides an unparalleled opportunity to fundamentally rethink the institutions, systems, and tools that drive progress. We have committed a $3.5B endowment to that work and fit the form of our support to the function it serves: grants, investments, and in-house research programs. We accept meaningful risk in the research we back and expect some of it to fail because transformative ideas are rarely the ones already proven. Our projects, and the foundation itself, operate like high-velocity startups, with a high performance bar and competitive compensation to match. We are searching for leaders who are compelled by the challenge of driving high-impact change in the way science is funded, conducted, and communicated. You can read more about our mission, vision, and programming at astera.org/vision . Company Overview Astera Neuro seeks to understand and engineer consciousness. We believe consciousness is the process by which the brain builds a coherent internal model of the world and the self. We aim to understand this model and to develop the technologies to write experience directly into the brain. By combining large-scale neural recording, causal perturbation, and brain-based AI, we seek to move neuroscience from observing correlates of experience to engineering it. The same tools carry direct therapeutic promise for neurological and psychiatric diseases that alter perception, thought, and sense of self. Because the science and tools required do not yet exist, we are assembling a founding team of neuroscientists, theorists, and engineers to create them. We do high-risk, high-reward science in a well-resourced, collaborative environment with competitive pay, and share everything openly under Astera's Open Science Policy. Position Summary As a Principal Hardware Engineer, you will design and build the physical systems our experiments depend on, most of which don't exist commercially. Working directly with scientists, you will take a project from a well-specified plan or a rough idea through design, fabrication, and iteration until it works for the experiment. The work crosses mechanical design, fabrication, electronics, and optics, often within a single project. This is a principal-level role: you will own complex instruments end-to-end, drive technical direction, help equip and run our design and prototyping facility, and set the engineering culture and standards as the hardware team grows, mentoring and hiring the engineers who join you. You do not need a background in neuroscience to apply, we are looking for world-class generalists who have built precision hardware in demanding industry settings and who pick up the science as they go. What You'll Do Design precision mechanical systems for experiments, such as titanium microfixtures, micrometer-precision electrode drives, and custom machined jigs. Build components for custom microscopes and optical systems, including alignment and mounting hardware. Design and iterate custom laboratory instrumentation and surgical or experimental robotics alongside the scientists who depend on them. Develop electronics and control hardware that interface mechanical systems with data acquisition and the rest of the research stack. Help build the design and prototyping facility itself — the tooling, workflows, and fabrication capabilities that determine how fast the team can move. Who You Are Required: Bachelor's degree (or equivalent experience) with 12+ years of experience in mechanical, electrical, or biomedical engineering, physics, or a related field, with a track record of building precision hardware in a high-precision industry (e.g., medical devices,