How To Become A Hardware Design Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a hardware design engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Robert Saunders P.E.

The evolution of our world into a new technological era began several decades ago, but today that change has accelerated dramatically. In this new panorama, Hardware Design Engineers play a fundamental role. Today, being part of this movement is very attractive to young people, who are immersed in this sea of electronic devices. Living off this seems like a fantasy, but one for which you have to take responsibility.

The Hardware Design Engineer creates components for computers and technological equipment according to customer needs. These clients span a huge range of companies and industries, from small retail businesses to giant military conglomerates. These hardware components, simple as they are, require extensive planning, a lot of technical work, and large amounts of testing before being delivered to the contractor.

Although there are many self-taught hardware designers, customers are often looking for individuals with a verifiable college education. Contractors are targeting systems engineers, electrical engineers, or computer science specialists, preferably with work experience in manufacturing electronic circuits for Silicon Valley companies.

The competition in this field is tremendous, but the demand is also high, so newbies can aspire to salaries of $32,000 a year, but veterans have no problem getting up to $115,000 annually.

What general advice would you give to a hardware design engineer?

Robert Saunders P.E.

Assistant Department Head, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

The job market for an electrical engineering student coming out of college is challenging right now. Many companies are still hiring electrical engineering students but, the students can't be as finicky about what jobs they are accepting. More than half of the students are starting their new jobs working remotely, which is a large shift from normal but the companies seem to be using this time to bring the new hires up to speed on policy, procedures, and industry regulations.

ScoreHardware Design EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.8

Avg. Salary $106,135

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

4.8

Growth rate 5%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.44%

Asian 29.93%

Black or African American 5.74%

Hispanic or Latino 10.17%

Unknown 2.88%

White 50.84%

Gender

female 9.92%

male 90.08%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress level

4.8

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.0

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.5

Work life balance is good

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a hardware design engineer

Explore hardware design engineer education requirements

Most common hardware design engineer degrees

Bachelor's

75.5 %

Master's

16.0 %

Associate

6.5 %

Start to develop specific hardware design engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
RF	7.10%
PCB	6.18%
Analog	6.06%
Firmware	4.10%
CAD	3.59%

Complete relevant hardware design engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New hardware design engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a hardware design engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real hardware design engineer resumes.

Research hardware design engineer duties and responsibilities

Perform back-end flow from RTL code synthesis, timing driven physical design to achieve a timing closure type-out database.
Lead design team through preliminary and detail design, including trade studies, requirement verification, system prototyping and testing.
Develop hardware and user-friendly GUI driven software to automate the manufacturing test and debug of microprocessor/ DSP control VXI bus modules.
Generate synthesis reports and automate simulation using Perl scripts.

Prepare your hardware design engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your hardware design engineer resume.

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