Hardware Project Engineer
Career Area: Engineering
Occupation Group: Electrical, Electronic, and Related Engineering
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Hardware Project Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $113,871
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $98,940
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Provides engineering and technical assistance for a hardware product development project. Assists with engineering design, product development and testing and manages project schedules and deliverables.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 10 | +6.7% |
| Nationwide | 383 | +6.1% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Hardware Project Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
- Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
- Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting or dpanneuring is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system.
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- Computer Engineering: Computer engineering is a discipline that integrates several fields of electrical engineering and computer science required to develop computer hardware and software.
- Hardware Experience: Experience developing hardware that provides a user-friendly experience, allowing the user to interact with the software or hardware in a natural and intuitive way.
- Linux: Linux (pronounced LIN-ks or, less frequently, LYN-ks) is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open-source software development and distribution.
- Software Development: Software development is the process of computer programming, documenting, testing, and bug fixing involved in creating and maintaining applications and frameworks resulting in a software product.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Hardware Project Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Microcontrollers: A microcontroller (or MCU for microcontroller unit) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit.
- Microprocessors: A microprocessor is a computer processor which incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC), or at most a few integrated circuits.
- Computer Vision: Working experience of Computer Vision, which is an interdisciplinary field that deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do. Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions.
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:
- Computer Vision: Working experience of Computer Vision, which is an interdisciplinary field that deals with how computers can be made for gaining high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do. Computer vision tasks include methods for acquiring, processing, analyzing and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions.
- PCI Express: Working experience of PCI Express. PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X, and AGP bus standards.
- Graphics Processing Units (GPU): Working experience of Graphics Processing Units (GPU). A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles.
- Systems Engineering: Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 31% |
| 3 to 5 years | 40% |
| 6 to 8 years | 15% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Computer Engineer
- Hardware Engineer
- Senior Hardware Engineer
- Computer Engineer In
- Lead Hardware Engineer
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles: