Applied AI Intern 

Team: Applied AI — Non-Silicon
Location: San Jose, California
Employment type: Internship

About the role

Astera Labs is looking for an Applied AI Intern to help build practical AI capabilities outside the company’s ASIC and silicon-development workflows. You will work with the Applied AI team, task leads, and cross-functional stakeholders to turn ambiguous problems into useful prototypes and dependable solutions.

This is a hands-on role for someone who enjoys moving from problem definition to implementation, testing, deployment, and iteration. You will have the opportunity to apply full-stack machine learning and generative AI programming, system design, and agent design to projects that improve efficiency and create measurable value for internal teams and stakeholders.

What you’ll do

• Understand a problem, clarify requirements, define success criteria, and translate them into an actionable project plan.

• Design and prototype machine learning, generative AI, or agentic solutions for non-silicon use cases.

• Build, test, deploy, debug, and validate a project end to end, including end-user testing.

• Move solutions through scoping, prototyping, user feedback, maintenance, and governance.

• Use metrics and stakeholder feedback to evaluate impact, improve quality, and identify next steps.

• Communicate progress, risks, tradeoffs, and decisions clearly to technical and non-technical partners.

• Drive your work independently while seeking feedback early and collaborating effectively across the Applied AI team.

• Document project outcomes, future use cases, and recommendations for continued development.

What you bring

• Hands-on experience through coursework, research, personal projects, or prior work involving programming, machine learning, generative AI, or software systems.

• Interest in applying AI to real operational or business problems—not only building models in isolation.

• Exposure to system design, agent design, software development, testing, deployment, or debugging.

• Ability to learn quickly, work through ambiguity, and turn feedback into concrete improvements.

• Strong ownership, organization, and follow-through, with the ability to set and meet milestones.

• Clear written and verbal communication and a collaborative approach to working with stakeholders.

What success looks like

By the end of the internship, you will have owned a meaningful project from scope through delivery, deployed a useful prototype or solution, demonstrated measurable outcomes, and clearly explained its impact and future path. You will contribute to a culture of building quickly, learning from feedback, and evangelizing practical AI adoption.

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.