Astera
Research Scientist / Engineer, Two-Photon Imaging & Holographic Optogenetics
About this role
Astera Neuro seeks a scientist-engineer to lead development of a miniaturized two-photon microscope with integrated holographic optogenetics for imaging and stimulating neural circuits in behaving rodents. You'll combine hands-on surgery, optical engineering, and computational neuroscience to create tools for understanding brain function at scale.
What you'll do
- Perform stereotaxic rodent surgeries including viral vector delivery, cranial window implantation, and head-mount device installation
- Design and build a miniaturized two-photon microscope with spatial light modulators for holographic photostimulation
- Develop and optimize optogenetics protocols for precise single-cell and ensemble-level neural activation
- Analyze large-scale neural population data using dimensionality reduction, decoding, GLMs, and circuit inference
- Collaborate with optical engineers, software developers, and neuroscientists to integrate hardware and software
- Contribute to publications and technical documentation
What they're looking for
- Stereotaxic rodent surgery and cranial implantation
- Two-photon microscopy system design and optical alignment
- Two-photon optogenetics and SLM-based holography
- Python or MATLAB for neural data analysis
- Nonlinear optics and ultrafast laser physics
- Fluorescence microscopy and optical characterization
- Neural population analysis and machine learning
- Custom optical engineering with pulsed lasers
Benefits
- Competitive base salary ($180,000–$230,000)
- Comprehensive benefits package
- Institutional support and freedom to move quickly
- Collaborative team of optical engineers and neuroscientists
- IACUC-approved animal research with veterinary support
- Work on transformative neuroscience tools
Opens the application — the Jobs AI extension fills it for you. Set up autofill
Opens the official application on the employer’s site. No login required.
Astera
Astera builds advanced infrastructure for large-scale distributed simulations, neuroscience research tools, and knowledge-sharing platforms aimed at accelerating scientific discovery. The company is hiring software engineers, ML researchers, and scientist-engineers to develop high-performance systems, specialized neuroscience instrumentation, and data-efficient machine learning approaches.
View all jobs at AsteraLikely interview questions
- Walk us through your experience with stereotaxic rodent surgery—what types of procedures have you performed, and how do you ensure consistent implant placement and animal recovery?
- Describe your hands-on experience with two-photon microscopy systems. What optical alignment challenges have you faced, and how did you troubleshoot them?