Principal Software Engineer, Neuroscience Platforms

About the role

Joining Astera Neuro at this stage means shaping the foundational infrastructure for a new era of brain research. We are building the instruments and systems that transform massive, chaotic neural signals into a clear understanding of thought and perception. Your work will directly enable how science discovers the rules of the brain. This role is for an engineer who thrives at the intersection of complex hardware and ambitious software. You will own the systems that acquire data from neural hardware, process it with strict timing, and deliver it to scientists. The role demands a rare blend of low-level engineering rigor and high-level scientific insight. You will translate ambiguous experimental goals into robust, production-grade software that powers discovery.

Key facts

What you'll do

You will architect and lead the core systems defining our research platform. You will design the real-time nervous system of our labs that coordinates every signal and response. You will build the stimulus and acquisition framework for VR and sensory environments that must align with neural recording hardware to within milliseconds. You will create the data backbone for our science by engineering high-throughput pipelines for electrophysiology, imaging, and behavior. You will enforce versioned data formats, automated quality checks, and rigorous metadata across all datasets. You will design the interface layer for our researchers by building dashboards and tools that make running and analyzing experiments feel seamless. You will implement the cloud infrastructure for our work, managing storage and compute for distributed teams handling datasets that scale to the terabyte and petabyte range. You will solve problems with extreme independence by taking vague ideas and defining the entire path to a working system without waiting for a perfect specification. You will bring a hard-won intuition for performance, understanding latency, hardware constraints, and data movement from real-time systems experience. You will act as a collaborative scientist at heart, intensely curious and learning the underlying biology as you contribute to research outcomes while mastering the science.

Requirements

Your academic background is diverse and welcome, and we value study in computer science, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, neuroscience, physics, or related fields. You have a history of shipping complex systems that others depend on, and reliability is not an afterthought for you. You understand the realities of integrating with physical hardware and you respect the limits of sensors, drivers, and communication buses. You think in pipelines and you understand dataflow, buffering, and backpressure in high-volume systems. You have a record of delivering complex systems with clean, tested, and documented code in production. You approach system design with both pragmatism and foresight, solving problems with extreme independence. You have a hard-won intuition for performance, with deep understanding of latency, hardware constraints, and data movement. You are a polyglot programmer proficient in at least two of Python, C++, C#, or Rust, with a deep understanding of language tradeoffs. You care about the details of correctness, actively preventing timing errors and data corruption. You are a collaborative scientist at heart who is intensely curious and masters new domains quickly. You are a complete owner of systems, guiding projects from initial architecture through deployment and operations while making and defending tradeoffs involving speed, durability, and team productivity. You work across the entire technical stack, being comfortable with low-level hardware interfaces and cloud-native design while building human-facing tools with both speed and aesthetic care. You are a technical leader who mentors other engineers and sets direction for cross-functional teams, making key decisions that impact our entire platform.

Nice to have

This role values a background in game engines, robotics, embedded devices, or audio/video processing for real-time systems expertise. Graduate research experience is a plus, but not a requirement, if it demonstrates your ability to master new domains quickly.

Practical notes

This is an on-site role at our Emeryville headquarters. The role is full-time, with standard working hours. The base compensation range is $190,000 to $310,000, calibrated for location.