Probe Engineer

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 . About Astera Neuro 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 Working closely with our experimental, surgical, and software teams, probe engineers here design and build the recording hardware – the probes, insertion mechanisms, and robotics that determine how much of the brain we can see, and how well. The role spans three tightly coupled problems: the probe (thin, flexible, high-density electrode arrays), the needle (the micro-machined tool that carries a probe past the meninges without damaging it or the tissue), and the robot (the precision system that places many probes quickly, accurately, and repeatedly while avoiding vasculature). You will move fluidly across mechanical design, microfabrication, and control, and you will own hardware from initial concept through benchtop validation and into the recording rig. We are hiring at multiple levels. As an Engineer, you will lead well-defined hardware projects with regular guidance. As a Senior Engineer, you will own hardware lines end-to-end, drive design decisions, and set fabrication and test strategy. As a Principal Engineer, you will define the probe and robotics roadmap, mentor engineers, and shape how mechanical, fabrication, and control work fit together at Astera. We will calibrate scope and title to your experience. What You’ll Do Design flexible, high-density neural probes; thin-film polymer arrays (polyimide, Parylene C, or comparable) patterned with hundreds to thousands of microelectrodes, from layout through fabrication and encapsulation. Build probe-to-chip integration and the readout signal chain, bonding high-density electrode arrays to amplifier and acquisition electronics, and developing the low-noise front-end that amplifies, digitizes, and streams microvolt neural signals to the acquisition system. Design insertion needles and needle-pincher mechanisms; micro-machined and electrochemically etched tools that grasp, insert, and release flexible prob