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Job outlook for hardware development engineers in the United States
Hardware development engineer job growth summary. After extensive research, interviews, and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
The projected hardware development engineer job growth rate is 5% from 2018-2028.
About 3,700 new jobs for hardware development engineers are projected over the next decade.
Hardware development engineer salaries have increased 4% for hardware development engineers in the last 5 years.
There are over 19,632 hardware development engineers currently employed in the United States.
There are 100,593 active hardware development engineer job openings in the US.
The average hardware development engineer salary is $119,370.
Are hardware development engineer jobs in demand?
Hardware development engineer job and salary trends over time
Hardware development engineer jobs over time
Hardware development engineer job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 19,632 | 0.01% |
| 2020 | 17,226 | 0.01% |
| 2019 | 18,070 | 0.01% |
| 2018 | 16,172 | 0.00% |
| 2017 | 17,774 | 0.01% |
Average hardware development engineer salary over time
Hardware development engineer salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $119,370 | $57.39 | +2.0% |
| 2024 | $117,034 | $56.27 | +2.3% |
| 2023 | $114,418 | $55.01 | --0.5% |
| 2022 | $114,937 | $55.26 | +0.0% |
| 2021 | $114,897 | $55.24 | +3.0% |
Hardware development engineer jobs by state
Most common states for hardware development engineers
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Washington | 7,405,743 | 3,066 | 41% |
| 2 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 278 | 40% |
| 3 | New Hampshire | 1,342,795 | 346 | 26% |
| 4 | Minnesota | 5,576,606 | 1,165 | 21% |
| 5 | Alaska | 739,795 | 157 | 21% |
| 6 | Massachusetts | 6,859,819 | 1,311 | 19% |
| 7 | New Mexico | 2,088,070 | 378 | 18% |
| 8 | South Dakota | 869,666 | 159 | 18% |
| 9 | North Dakota | 755,393 | 136 | 18% |
| 10 | California | 39,536,653 | 6,763 | 17% |
| 11 | Virginia | 8,470,020 | 1,433 | 17% |
| 12 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 317 | 17% |
| 13 | Georgia | 10,429,379 | 1,658 | 16% |
| 14 | North Carolina | 10,273,419 | 1,598 | 16% |
| 15 | Wisconsin | 5,795,483 | 952 | 16% |
| 16 | Alabama | 4,874,747 | 768 | 16% |
| 17 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 835 | 15% |
| 18 | Iowa | 3,145,711 | 486 | 15% |
| 19 | Kansas | 2,913,123 | 423 | 15% |
| 20 | Arkansas | 3,004,279 | 411 | 14% |
Most common cities for hardware development engineers
| Rank | City | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl | Avg. salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cupertino | 7 | 12% | $142,013 |
| 2 | Burlington | 1 | 4% | $107,101 |
| 3 | Annapolis | 1 | 3% | $100,669 |
| 4 | Juneau | 1 | 3% | $107,992 |
| 5 | Hawthorne | 2 | 2% | $129,263 |
| 6 | Mountain View | 2 | 2% | $142,124 |
| 7 | San Jose | 7 | 1% | $141,806 |
| 8 | Irvine | 2 | 1% | $127,757 |
| 9 | Cambridge | 1 | 1% | $107,114 |
| 10 | Hartford | 1 | 1% | $110,039 |
| 11 | Lansing | 1 | 1% | $72,683 |
| 12 | Boston | 2 | 0% | $107,128 |
| 13 | Denver | 2 | 0% | $96,433 |
| 14 | Atlanta | 1 | 0% | $91,337 |
| 15 | Baton Rouge | 1 | 0% | $93,031 |
| 16 | Des Moines | 1 | 0% | $87,742 |
| 17 | Glendale | 1 | 0% | $129,930 |
| 18 | Montgomery | 1 | 0% | $95,779 |
Hardware Development Engineer job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of hardware development engineer experts
Gonzaga University
Stevens Institute of Technology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
San Diego State University
Old Dominion University
Michigan Technological University
Kennesaw State University
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Wright State University
What Hardware Development Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Steven Schennum Ph.D. P.E.: The most important skill is the ability to learn new things, and especially to unlearn things you “know” after evidence demonstrates that these things are not true. Learn how to analyze information. Your intuition, simulations, and results should all be in alignment. If they are not, then dig deeper. Learn the terminology and jargon specific to your company and your projects. Spend time reading. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be intimidated by new software.
What Hardware Development Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Min Song: Communication skills and innovative thinking skills. As emerging technologies continue to be complex and multidisciplinary, it’s important to be able to communicate with professionals in diverse disciplines. Taking robotics, for example, the electrical engineer must be able to work with mechanical and biomechanical engineers, computer engineers, software engineers, artificial intelligence experts, cognitive scientists, system engineers, etc. A person will be able to generate innovative ideas only if the person has a complete and comprehensive understanding of the entire system and can work well with other individuals with a range of expertise.
What Hardware Development Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Arie Nakhmani: Electrical Engineering has always (from its inception) been a good profession to enter, but now it is better than ever. Now everything is becoming Electrical Engineering, and the world cannot survive without it even for a few days. Electrical Engineering is the most necessary profession for the survival of modern society.
What will help Hardware Development Engineers increase their earning potential?
Dr. Arif Engin: Electrical engineers solve problems by skillfully applying mathematics and science. Electrical engineering classes are challenging at college, and electrical engineers must embrace lifelong learning to remain at the top of their skills. In the end, seeing the results of their work in a finished product is a rewarding experience.
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Hardware Development Engineers?
Michel Audette Ph.D.: My take on this is what I've seen with my wife's work in industry, which suggests that the industrial landscape is going to be increasingly equipped for, and open to, remote work. I think that the implication for graduates is that they may need to be flexible about working within a geographically distributed team. If company deciders feel that someone is worth employing because of a unique skill set, then they would typically be more willing to hire that person even if unable to make it to work regularly, if that is feasible given the nature of the work; some work, such as hardware testing or industrial production, may not lend itself to remote contributions.
Nonetheless, for those areas that accommodate geographically distributed activity, such as software development, graduates can expect to interact with team members all over the US, possibly all over the world, if someone is deemed unique enough to hire despite living abroad. This places a high premium on the ability and willingness to work in a heterogeneous team, where not only will members look different, but also have myriad accents in their English, which will also impose a certain adaptability and tolerance to team members.
A related impact could also be that global hiring will make it easier for multi-national companies to hire a portion of their talent in countries where wages are lower and motivate US-based engineers to seek out graduate degrees in order to increase their competitiveness and employability at US salaries.
What type of skills will young Hardware Development Engineers need?
Michel Audette Ph.D.: One skill that is timeless is the ability to communicate effectively, such as taking a complex design process and distilling it into intuitive slides or reports that lend themselves for senior managers to process in order to come to a decision. An engineer who has that ability will always have some tools in his/her toolbox that makes that individual attractive to a company and to the local technical ecosystem, thus a ripe target for headhunters who willing to champion them to companies looking for top talent. Moreover, speaking and writing well also comes with a vital component of diplomacy, especially in the context of increasingly distributed company workforce: the ability not just to get on with colleagues from different parts of the world, increasingly heterogeneous in terms of gender and possibly sexual preference, but embrace them for who they are. This is often maps to opportunities to travel, as some collaborations lead to meetings face to face, post-covid.
This embrace of heterogeneity is even more relevant in that technical problems being solved are increasingly multi-disciplinary, so that an engineer may need to interact with biologists, physicians, clothing or furniture designers, mathematicians, lawyers, and so on: in my own case, I have to wear a multitude of different hats, while recognizing someone who is a perfect fit for one of those hats when I meet that individual, and making the most of that opportunity to build a truly competent team. Engineers must be able to hold a meaningful, respectful conversation with any of these counterparts, not just discuss code or circuit design. I would advocate that they spend time reading, to maintain their vocabulary and stay abreast of the world around them.
Another one that I advocate is the ability to tap into a revolution that has occurred in parallel with the advent of Internet and cellular technologies, these past 30+ years: the explosion of open-source software tools. I am a committed proponent of open source, as a former contributor to them while previously employed at Kitware (a pioneer in this area, behind VTK, ITK, CMake, and myriad others). I see job ads in Indeed.com that specifically ask for the ability to work with these tools, since they save work and make it possible to produce a prototype in much less time than developing it completely in-house. This ability does not just presuppose the ability to program at a competent level, but other abilities: the ability to track bugs that not be in the calling program, but in the open-source software library itself, the willingness to get answers in the community of developers, the eye for details that extends to graphical processor units that result in accelerations an order of magnitude or better, and so on. These go way beyond writing a self-contained algorithm. Hardware designers may also have similar tools, based on broad standards, Arduino, and the prevalence of 3D printers that make it possible to physically replicate digital models.
Finally, a vital skill is the willingness and ability to keep learning, while embracing revolutions that take place at breathtaking pace. The latest one is the reliance on deep neural networks (DNNs) to synthesize algorithms that can learn and adapt to their data, with much faster performances than feasible with the previous algorithms that DNNs have replaced. The point to make here is not to embrace neural networks in a proximal sense, but that we cannot anticipate what will come next, downstream of DNNs. Graduates of 2021 have to be willing to keep their curiosity and work ethic enough to be responsive to the next wave of technologies, and embrace them for the opportunities that they represent.
What experience really stands out on Hardware Development Engineer resumes?
Joshua Pearce Ph.D: There has been an ongoing trend of employers wanting to see students' work before interviewing or making a job offer. One of the best ways for graduates to stand out is to have made a significant contribution to an open-source project. Your resume then starts to look more like a portfolio than just a list of positions or skills. This is already mature in the computer and software industries, but now we see it in hardware. For example, in manufacturing industries, employers want to see your CAD work - what open-source designs have you shared on sites like YouMagine and MyMiniFactory?
How do you envision technology impacting Hardware Development Engineers in the next 5 years?
Hai Ho Ph.D.: We are heading into the so-called fourth industrial revolution with blossoming technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, mixed reality, etc. Therefore, this field will experience tremendous growth and opportunities.
Robert Saunders P.E.
Assistant Department HeadUniversity of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Electrical Engineering Department
What Hardware Development Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Robert Saunders P.E.: Project management and/or leadership training, either at the university they graduated from, or a good online source. Either or both of these would demonstrate the proactive attitude of the student. And get involved in something; community service groups, design a project, anything that shows you are pushing forward professionally and personally, not just sitting at home.
What general advice would you give to a Hardware Development Engineer?
Fred Garber Ph.D.: I think the primary question, in the minds of those who are yet to graduate or are still searching, is in regard to the strength of the technical job market, especially the local job market. But you are in a position to definitively answer that question.
In you article, I would ask that you address the following:
Number of employers looking to fill and number of job offerings in the region (by engineering and computer science major) compared to last year and to the previous five years.
Any noticeable differences in job descriptions Zippia is receiving relative to work environment, benefits, starting salaries, etc.
Many of our soon-to-graduate students would be very interested in these quantitative and qualitative comparisons. Additionally, vast numbers of potential students would benefit from such information to guide their career choices.