Jobs at Astera

Build and evaluate wheeled robotic platforms and lifting systems. Responsibilities include mechanical prototyping, chassis and mechanism fabrication, drivetrain and lifting performance testing, motor and sensor integration, basic controls and data-collection scripting, CAD and wiring documentation, and maintaining experimental hardware. The intern will compare designs based on performance, reliability, cost, stability, and ease of integration under engineering mentorship.

Lead product strategy for the open-source Discourse Graphs project. Work directly with researchers to understand needs, prioritize an ordered product queue, develop prototypes, and collaborate closely with designers and engineers. The role involves shaping the product’s future across plugins, standalone applications, and research workflows; conducting regular user research; and working independently in a distributed, manager-free team.

Designs and builds robotic mechanisms, electronics, sensing systems, and experimental fixtures from concept through fabrication and testing. Responsibilities include CAD, PCB design and bring-up, actuator and sensor integration, embedded firmware, hardware characterization, troubleshooting, and reproducible test development. The engineer collaborates with controls and machine learning researchers on manipulators, dexterous hands, and humanoids, using physical experiments to improve robot hardware and exploring AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Develop and deploy learning-based robotic manipulation systems, connecting perception, policy models, sensors, inference, and robot control. Fine-tune vision and action models, optimize inference for physical hardware, implement responsive policy execution, diagnose failures across software and hardware, and build reusable robot software with logging, replay, evaluation, configuration, and testing capabilities.

Lead robotics research and engineering across perception, learning, simulation, planning, control, hardware integration, and deployment. Translate scientific priorities into reliable physical-robot capabilities, establish evaluation standards, solve cross-stack technical problems, and guide the robotics roadmap. Recruit and mentor researchers and engineers, collaborate with AI and neuroscience specialists, and make hardware, compute, and tooling decisions.

Designs, fabricates, and iterates precision mechanical systems, optical components, laboratory instrumentation, robotics, electronics, and control hardware for neuroscience experiments. The role spans concept development, machining, prototyping, integration, testing, and reliable operation. The engineer will collaborate closely with scientists, build custom research tools, make performance and manufacturability tradeoffs, and help establish Astera Neuro’s design, prototyping, and fabrication facility.

Provides executive and administrative support to the Head of AI Research and Head of Strategic Investments. Responsibilities include complex calendar and travel coordination, expense and procurement administration, meeting preparation, action-item tracking, visitor logistics, recruiting coordination, event support, CRM maintenance, board meeting logistics, onboarding, and confidential information handling. The role also supports foundation operations, vendor coordination, communications, and process improvement while working onsite five days per week.

Build and operate AI-powered recruiting workflows across sourcing, scheduling, candidate communication, pipeline reporting, and ATS integrations. The role combines technical recruiting, automation design, candidate experience, hiring-manager partnership, and people-operations support. The recruiter will configure Ashby or Rippling, connect LLM agents and automation tools, establish human-review guardrails, develop dashboards and reusable processes, and support hiring for specialized technical and scientific roles in a fast-moving, in-person environment.

Support the Head of Open Science by managing initiatives, workflows, documentation, policy implementation, external proposal intake, stakeholder relationships, events, hiring support, and team onboarding. The role coordinates internal and external stakeholders, screens open science opportunities, prepares leadership materials, tracks decisions, and improves operational processes. It requires strong project management, communication, discretion, and familiarity with open science ecosystems.

Design control-system requirements and architecture for a DNA-origami electrostatic actuator-sensor system. Define sensor and actuator constraints, review FET and drive-stack designs, specify experimental data capture for system identification and machine learning, and develop a closed-loop control, simulation, and estimation plan. Provide a documented handoff to the incoming Controls engineer while advising physics and wet-lab teams on a fractional contract basis.

Lead research to develop post-training reinforcement learning methods that convert high-throughput biological measurements into rewards for generative biological language models. Architect and run large-scale model training, work closely with experimental teams to align measurements and modeling, and iterate rapidly to publish new methods and models.

Design and build precision experimental hardware end-to-end, spanning mechanical design, fabrication, electronics, and optics. Lead technical direction, run and equip the prototyping facility, mentor and hire engineers, and collaborate closely with scientists to iterate toward reliable instruments.

Lead design and implementation of low-latency, multi-modal neuroscience research systems: instrument control, data acquisition, high-throughput pipelines, experiment UIs, and cloud infrastructure. Define technical roadmap, mentor engineers, and ensure production reliability and performance for large-scale neural data workflows.

Build and maintain The Stacks web platform: back-end services, front-end interfaces, data models, APIs, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, testing, and open-source components. Collaborate across teams, iterate rapidly, support post-launch improvements, and ensure availability and observability.

Design and validate an electrostatic drive and field-effect position sensor for a nanoscale DNA-origami actuator; define device stack and direct cleanroom fabrication; perform electrical and force/displacement characterization (including AFM); ensure low-noise measurement toolchain and collaborate with molecular-design and controls teams for closed-loop operation.

Design and build custom precision optical systems (large field-of-view, high-speed two-photon imaging and photostimulation), develop a miniature two-photon microscope for freely moving animals, and build electronics, control hardware, and software to integrate optics with data acquisition. Own instruments end-to-end and iterate designs with scientists and collaborators.

Support the COO by tracking cross-functional projects, maintaining timelines and dashboards, coordinating meetings and vendor/facilities logistics, assisting recruiting and onboarding, planning events, and building automation and lightweight tools to improve operations. Use AI and no-code tools to streamline workflows and take on ad hoc initiatives as priorities shift.

Lead Astera's events and communications: design and run events end-to-end, build scalable playbooks and vendor relationships, manage website/blog/socials and external communications, steward voice and production calendar, hire and manage external contractors, and support general operations across a growing research institute.

DiffUSE seeks individuals interested in interdisciplinary roles involving computational biology, machine learning, and open scientific tooling. Responsibilities include data processing, ML research, infrastructure engineering, and community building.

The Machine Learning Researcher will develop new architectures for data-efficient model induction, focusing on optimizing generalization performance and runtime inference in networks, while contributing to a performance-driven code base.