
Ask HN: Which hardware careers can be high-paying? - hw_engineer
Last weekend there was an &quot;Ask HN&quot; question about engineering careers [1], mainly in CA, that reaches 300k+ salary. All the answers were by software engineers and the like, which is expected here at HN.<p>So, the question is: is there a highly profitable career (150k+) in your region (specially CA) or company for hardware-focused?<p>Which are these careers and what skills are in demand for them?<p>To give a more concrete situation (and avoid the XY problem): I feel a bit like the top answer of this thread[2]: I fell I&#x27;m wasting my skills and the prime earning ears in a not-so-high-paying industry (scientific facility) in a low-wage region (not EU or USA).<p>So, I&#x27;m planning to both relocate to US or EU, maybe China or Japan; and probably also change market so I can get my career in a better-paying track. I consider myself very broadly skilled, having designed high-performance electronics (board level, never IC level),done FPGA development, including DSP, and programming from embedded up in a few programming languages, even occasionally contributing to some open-source projects. I also oversaw several short-run manufacturing and deployment, which is a skill set by itself.<p>However, I have some anxiety on which path to follow. Should I focus on:<p>* learning a particular set of board-level design tools for getting my foot in SV consumer electronics companies?<p>* try to get a PhD and learn analog IC design?<p>* using my current experience to get a decent paying job in a FAANG (all of them seem to be doing HW now, except maybe Netflix) and set foot on the door?<p>As you see, I have some anxiety and maybe people here could help. Maybe my software skills could put me in a better track, but I first want to check if I can make better use of my 10+ hardware-focused career.<p>Thank you.<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16811454
[2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16811968
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gautamb0
My background is slightly higher-level than yours; CPU architecture. I have
friends and colleagues with similar backgrounds, and the ones pulling in the
most have either pivoted all but entirely to software, or have managed to find
hardware roles within the big 4. They do exist. The latter get the best of
both worlds, as they pay essentially the same as they do for software roles,
and come with the rest of the usual perks. Banks are similar, but my
observation which may or may not be completely accurate, is that they are
pickier and narrower in scope.

I would be wary about getting a PhD in anything outside of computer science
today, though. The roles are out there, but there are far fewer of them.

~~~
hw_engineer
Thank you for your answer. This is the kind of info I'm looking for.

Maybe you got my background wrong: I do not design ICs currently, I was
wondering if I should. I do design boards (high speed digital and analog RF in
the higher end) and do FPGA programming to make them work. CPU design is an
area of interest, but way to niche for my current field of work to
accommodate.

Which areas a PhD could leverage both computing and my hardware design
experience? Also, any ideas of skills or tools set required for getting into
one of the big 4s?

~~~
gautamb0
I don’t have a PhD. In my opinion, if you don’t have a decent idea about what
you want to get yours in, you probably should be thinking twice about getting
one at all. There’s a huge opportunity cost, and the job market will probably
change in non-trivial ways by the time you’re done. Only do it if you’re
certain you want to become an expert in something specific. Microsoft and
Google in particular are doing a lot of work with FPGAs. (Though, admittedly,
the most interesting of these are probably research positions where relevant
PhD’s are the norm) Apple does the full stack when it comes to hardware, and
I’d expect them to have plenty of analog people. The best route might be to
tell the right story based on your past experience and pair it with relevant
positions at the bigcos. How to get their attention is unfortunately a topic
that literally plenty of books have been written on, and I’m as far from an
expert at it as possible. :p

~~~
hw_engineer
Thank you. I'm finishing my masters while working and thinking a lot if I
should or not get a PhD. The tendency is not to.

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lnsru
You can live well in Germany if you can do a) FPGA+embedded Linux+OpenCV+PCB
Design+microprocessors or b) FPGA+RF hardware+RF protocols+PCB Design. I am
sure, that your skill set is sufficient. Though the opportunities are rare.
And only it works in large enterprises paying according IG Metall tables. If
you don’t have family, go to Silicon Valley or Switzerland.

~~~
hw_engineer
Plan b sounds much better from my perspective, even thought I could hack a if
needed. The rarity of opportunities is what scares me.

SV sounds obvious, but why Swirtzerland?

~~~
s3nnyy
There are many reasons why people move here, I even wrote a blogpost about it:
"Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech"
[http://bit.ly/2JxSQPt](http://bit.ly/2JxSQPt)

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TaylorAlexander
Google has a whole division now called Google Consumer Hardware, and they’re
hiring hardware engineers at the typical Google salaries. Google X, Waymo, and
Verily all do plenty of hardware too. And of course Apple does hardware. Tesla
hires hardware people too but I haven’t heard the greatest things about their
salaries or work life balance.

~~~
hw_engineer
Yeah, I've already read about Tesla, and was not considering them already.

Do you know how hard it is to get these Google opportunities? Do they do
whiteboard interviews as with SE?

~~~
ultrasounder
White board interviews are common across all kinds of companies in SV not just
for SW roles. I was asked to invert a tree for a HW test role at Google and
very recently asked to come up with code for a particular situation for a test
role at Apple.

~~~
hw_engineer
Oh god, I could not invert a tree in a whiteboard for my life. I took a MOOC
algorithm class for fun, but never applied any of it at work and never
intended too. The nearer I've ever got was FPGA implementation of some sorting
algs, all just for fun.

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neom
Banks pay HW engineers a lot. I know a dude at JPMC (nyc) who is clearing 450k
doing HW (dc/priv cloud) design. I wouldn't be surprised if folks at somewhere
like two sigma make around the same.

~~~
nodesocket
dc/priv cloud seems more like IT and infrastructure and less electrical
engineering though right?

~~~
neom
I should clarify, by private cloud, I mean a few custom designed servers
running open stack or something, and DC I mean some built up "pod/rack" design
you might colo. Ether way, I mean end to end, I was just trying to account for
colo a _nd_ on-prem (two sigma, for example, have a small private cloud in
their office that's quite well architected.)

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mseebach
High frequency trading is largely done in hardware these days. It's a
constantly moving target, dealing in nanoseconds. It's not my area of
expertise, but last I heard, ASICs directly in the switch is where it's at
these days.

Compensation-wise, if you have the right skills and can find the right place,
it can make software engineering look like bagging groceries. Mostly
concentrated around financial centres, so more New York and London, less so
CA.

~~~
physguy1123
FPGAs are certainly extremely useful but most hft is moving away from purely
speed focused stuff. Only one place that I know of does asics like that and it
was a complete boondoggle. The difficulty of changing, printing and verifying
an asic just doesn't make sense especially once your latencies are a tiny
fraction of exchange jitter, and the smarter player saw the trade you wanted
to make way ahead of time anyways.

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asynchronous13
Talking to some people in San Francisco, it seems like there is high demand
for electrical engineers with hardware experience at the moment. There's tons
of programmers, but few hardware people. Check out Lemnos Labs in SF, they
just raised some money and are focused on hardware startups.

I would guess $100k-150k salary depending on the company and your experience.

~~~
hw_engineer
Thanks for the Lemons reference. Maybe I'll get in contact, at least to get a
sense of the market and opportunities.

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ultrasounder
FAANG+Microsoft and they have a division focused on Hardware operating out of
their MV office off of shoreline Blvd next to computer history museum. They
hire for board level HW engineers to work on Hololens and their other HW
initiatives. Check out their websites for the actual listings

~~~
hw_engineer
You're right: [https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/397873/Sr-
Electrical...](https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/job/397873/Sr-Electrical-
Engineer)

The only problem is that I do not have any experience on consumer electronics,
even thought I've worked with all these technologies in some level, sometime
in my career. Would this be a show stopper?

    
    
      5+ years of experience designing and building electronics products with a focus on consumer and portable systems.

~~~
ultrasounder
Don't think so. When I got into CE I came from a Medical devices background.
All they are looking for is your ability to go from specs to schematics to pcb
layout to overseas manufacturing builds transfer. This process though not set
in stone is very common across various industries.

~~~
hw_engineer
Thanks! This is the kind of information I needed!

I surely have gone in all these steps, just in smaller scale (few hundreds at
a time). Now I quadrupled my confidence on these applications, given that I
already worked on a varied of situations.

------
physguy1123
Send an email to the address in my profile. A team in my company is looking
for talented hardware engineers and pays above what you want, along with great
work/life balance and benefits.

~~~
hw_engineer
Thank you, seems very interesting! Already sent you an email.

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neuronsguy
Trading. Check out firms like Optiver, Jump Trading, XR, etc. Big bucks for
FPGA devs

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alain94040
IC design can still pay very well in Silicon Valley. So you are on right track
with that, if that's what you really enjoy. Also, people who can wear both
hardware and software hats are extremely valuable (aka highly paid), but for
very specialized jobs. For instance, embedded programming for high-end chips.

~~~
hw_engineer
Yeah, but IC design would be a long shot to me. I have lots of board level
experience, but just the odd academic course on IC design. If needed, I'll do,
but I'd rather leverage my board and system level expertise.

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auntienomen
I'd bet that within the next 5-10 years, a lot of neural networks are going to
shift from running on graphics cards to running on custom hardware. Probably
some opportunities there, given the wide applicability.

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madengr
RF/Microwave hardware design, DSP with FPGA, maybe SDR. Though those all would
be specific to the military-industrial complex.

~~~
aylons
From my experience, he probably won't be able to leverage this to relocate,
precisely because it is a bit military-prone and these things require
clearance only a citizen may get.

SDR was actually an area I worked on while at college, and a bit in a few
companies after that. Both CPU-based and FPGA-based, on the early days of GNU
radio.

There's some niches SDR and RF may get outside military use: RF-based
instrumentation (I currently work on a particle accelerator), TV and Brodcast
equipment (I also worked before in these areas), but these are VERY niche.

Well, if anyone knows about some interesting opportunity that resembles this,
I'd be glad to hear!

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snissn
Medical testing lab on a chip hardware manufacturing can be pretty lucrative
until the sec shuts you down

~~~
godelmachine
You talking about Theranos ? Never knew what they were doing was Lab-on-a-
Chip.

