How to hire a hardware manager

How to hire a hardware manager, step by step

Here's a step-by-step hardware manager hiring guide:

• Step 1: Identify your hiring needs
• Step 2: Create an ideal candidate profile
• Step 3: Make a budget
• Step 4: Write a hardware manager job description
• Step 5: Post your job
• Step 6: Interview candidates
• Step 7: Send a job offer and onboard your new hardware manager
• Step 8: Go through the hiring process checklist

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1. Identify your hiring needs

   Before you start hiring a hardware manager, identify what type of worker you actually need. Certain positions might call for a full-time employee, while others can be done by a part-time worker or contractor.

   Determine employee vs contractor status

   Is the person you're thinking of hiring a US citizen or green card holder?

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   You should also consider the ideal background you'd like them a hardware manager to have before you start to hire. For example, what industry or field would you like them to have experience in, what level of seniority or education does the job require, and how much it'll cost to hire a hardware manager that fits the bill.

   This list presents hardware manager salaries for various positions.

   Type of Hardware Manager	Description	Hourly rate
   Hardware Manager	Computer hardware engineers research, design, develop, and test computer systems and components such as processors, circuit boards, memory devices, networks, and routers. These engineers discover new directions in computer hardware, which generate rapid advances in computer technology.	$45-100
   Verification Engineer	A verification engineer is responsible for running quality tests to the production processes to ensure high-quality outputs according to business requirements and client specifications. Verification engineers develop testing methodologies, inspect tools and equipment, and creating instructional manuals... Show more	$36-68
   Design Verification Engineer	A design verification engineer is responsible for running diagnostic tests on project outputs and adjusting methodologies as needed to achieve high-quality deliverables according to clients' specifications and business requirements. Design verification engineers create efficient techniques to improve products and services by utilizing various system tools and applications... Show more	$42-74

   Show more

2. Create an ideal candidate profile

   Common skills:

   • RF
   • Customer Service
   • Product Knowledge
   • CAD
   • Design Reviews
   • Direct Reports
   • HW
   • Performance Reviews
   • ISO
   • PCB
   • FPGA
   • Circuit Boards
   • Sales Floor
   • System Design

   Check all skills

   Responsibilities:

   • Manage employees and run cash registers.
   • Manage multiple PCB builds from initial protos to A0 and to production.
   • Manage a team that develop the XGEM Capture/Replay feature for 10G Ethernet.
   • Result achieve by reusing existing power and cables while installing new EMC DMX3 units.
   • Manage the regulatory approval process for all products including FCC, UL and CE.
   • Manage all endpoint moves adds and changes including PC's, phones, and mobile devices.

   More hardware manager duties

3. Make a budget

   Including a salary range in your hardware manager job description is one of the best ways to attract top talent. A hardware manager can vary based on:

   • Location. For example, hardware managers' average salary in tennessee is 52% less than in washington.
   • Seniority. Entry-level hardware managers 54% less than senior-level hardware managers.
   • Certifications. A hardware manager with certifications usually earns a higher salary.
   • Company. Working for an established firm or a new start-up company can make a big difference in a hardware manager's salary.

   Average hardware manager salary

   $140,910yearly

   $67.75 hourly rate

   ---

   Entry-level hardware manager salary

   $95,000 yearly salary

   Updated January 20, 2026

   Average hardware manager salary by state

   Rank	State	Avg. salary	Hourly rate
   1	Washington	$175,118	$84
   2	California	$164,032	$79
   3	Colorado	$139,960	$67
   4	New Jersey	$127,515	$61
   5	Pennsylvania	$124,227	$60
   6	Rhode Island	$121,945	$59
   7	Alabama	$120,581	$58
   8	North Carolina	$116,750	$56
   9	Illinois	$115,465	$56

   Average hardware manager salary by company

   Company

   Rank	Company	Average salary	Hourly rate	Job openings
   1	Palo Alto Networks	$164,069	$78.88
   2	Apple	$162,782	$78.26	36
   3	ZOOM+Care	$157,732	$75.83
   4	NVIDIA	$155,748	$74.88	40
   5	Zoom Video Communications	$147,987	$71.15
   6	Pluribus Networks	$146,417	$70.39
   7	Ace Hardware	$144,926	$69.68	32
   8	KLA	$140,356	$67.48
   9	Qualcomm	$136,341	$65.55	20
   10	Sandia National Labs	$124,930	$60.06
   11	Amazon	$112,627	$54.15	163
   12	NeuroStar	$101,765	$48.93
   13	Northrop Grumman	$98,087	$47.16	12
   14	Faraday Future	$97,178	$46.72
   15	Brown University	$77,943	$37.47
   16	Cyient	$74,842	$35.98
   17	Riverhead Building Supply	$52,439	$25.21

4. Writing a hardware manager job description

   A hardware manager job description should include a summary of the role, required skills, and a list of responsibilities. It's also good to include a salary range and the first name of the hiring manager. To help get you started, here's an example of a hardware manager job description:

   Hardware manager job description example

   Minimum qualifications:
   
   + Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
   
   + 10 years of experience working on and leading hardware design, verification or testing initiatives.
   
   + 3 years of experience in managing technical teams.
   
   + Experience in establishing project goals, coordinating resources, and providing technical leadership.
   
   Preferred qualifications:
   
   + Master's degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering, Computer Science or a related field.
   
   + Experience managing lab work, data collection, and root-cause analysis.
   
   + Knowledge of networking equipment, switches and cabling, as well as protocol interfaces like PCIe and Ethernet used for connectivity, and the physical, functional, logical, mechanical, electrical, and software requirements to test them.
   
   + Understanding of testing and hardware qualification requirements, best practices and algorithms for data center hardware.
   
   + Ability to influence test and qualification processes, improving quality, increasing performance, enabling automation, and reducing cost/resourcing.
   
   + Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
   
   Our computational challenges are so big, complex and unique we can't just purchase off-the-shelf hardware, we've got to make it ourselves. Your team designs and builds the hardware, software and networking technologies that power all of Google's services. As a Hardware Engineer, you design and build the systems that are the heart of the world's largest and most powerful computing infrastructure. You develop from the lowest levels of circuit design to large system design and see those systems all the way through to high volume manufacturing. Your work has the potential to shape the machinery that goes into our cutting-edge data centers affecting millions of Google users.
   
   Pulling on your technical and leadership expertise, you lead end-to-end research projects in multiple areas of expertise across data center facilities and manage a team of direct reports working on equipment installation, troubleshooting and debugging.
   
   The Platforms team designs, builds, and collaborates on the hardware, software, and networking technologies that power all of Google's services. As a Hardware Test and Qualification Engineer in Google's design and test team, you will qualify new components, servers, storage devices, and specialized machine learning hardware for Google's data centers, ensuring they meet Google's stringent requirements for performance, security, reliability, and features.
   
   Behind everything our users see online is the architecture built by the Technical Infrastructure team to keep it running. From developing and maintaining our data centers to building the next generation of Google platforms, we make Google's product portfolio possible. We're proud to be our engineers' engineers and love voiding warranties by taking things apart so we can rebuild them. We keep our networks up and running, ensuring our users have the best and fastest experience possible.
   
   + Lead a team to resource and enable qualification of products of networking products, cables, switches, and other data center hardware from concept design to final production and deployment.
   
   + Collaborate with cross-functional leaders and external vendors/partners to track test/qualification status and report progress to organization leaders.
   
   + Act as a "go-to" technical leader with knowledge of the equipment and the hardware being deployed.
   
   + Maintain and improve qualification processes.
   
   + Support career development and growth of individual team members and make equitable hiring and talent decisions.

   Copy this example

   

5. Post your job

   To find the right hardware manager for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

   • Consider internal talent. One of the most important sources of talent for any company is its existing workforce.
   • Ask for referrals. Reach out to friends, family members, and current employees and ask if they know or have worked with hardware managers they would recommend.
   • Recruit at local colleges. Attend job fairs at local colleges to recruit hardware managers who meet your education requirements.
   • Social media platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter now have more than 3.5 billion users, and you can use social media to reach potential job candidates.

   Post your job online:

   • Post your hardware manager job on Zippia to find and recruit hardware manager candidates who meet your exact specifications.
   • Use field-specific websites.
   • Post a job on free websites.

6. Interview candidates

   To successfully recruit hardware managers, your first interview needs to engage with candidates to learn about their interest in the role and experience in the field. You can go into more detail about the company, the role, and the responsibilities during follow-up interviews.

   You should also ask about candidates' unique skills and talents to see if they match the ideal candidate profile you developed earlier. Candidates good enough for the next step can complete the technical interview.

   The right interview questions can help you assess a candidate's hard skills, behavioral intelligence, and soft skills.

7. Send a job offer and onboard your new hardware manager

   Once you've found the hardware manager candidate you'd like to hire, it's time to write an offer letter. This should include an explicit job offer that includes the salary and the details of any other perks. Qualified candidates might be looking at multiple positions, so your offer must be competitive if you like the candidate. Also, be prepared for a negotiation stage, as candidates may way want to tweak the details of your initial offer. Once you've settled on these details, you can draft a contract to formalize your agreement.

   You should also follow up with applicants who don't get the job with an email letting them know that you've filled the position.

   Once that's done, you can draft an onboarding schedule for the new hardware manager. Human Resources should complete Employee Action Forms and ensure that onboarding paperwork is completed, including I-9s, benefits enrollment, federal and state tax forms, etc. They should also ensure that new employee files are created for internal recordkeeping.

8. Go through the hiring process checklist

   • Determine employee type (full-time, part-time, contractor, etc.)
   • Submit a job requisition form to the HR department
   • Define job responsibilities and requirements
   • Establish budget and timeline
   • Determine hiring decision makers for the role
   • Write job description
   • Post job on job boards, company website, etc.
   • Promote the job internally
   • Process applications through applicant tracking system
   • Review resumes and cover letters
   • Shortlist candidates for screening
   • Hold phone/virtual interview screening with first round of candidates
   • Conduct in-person interviews with top candidates from first round
   • Score candidates based on weighted criteria (e.g., experience, education, background, cultural fit, skill set, etc.)
   • Conduct background checks on top candidates
   • Check references of top candidates
   • Consult with HR and hiring decision makers on job offer specifics
   • Extend offer to top candidate(s)
   • Receive formal job offer acceptance and signed employment contract
   • Inform other candidates that the position has been filled
   • Set and communicate onboarding schedule to new hire(s)
   • Complete new hire paperwork (i9, benefits enrollment, tax forms, etc.)

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