Hardware Technical Lead

3dB Labs, Inc.; North Olmsted (OH); Hybrid; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

3dB Labs, Inc. seeks a Hardware Technical Lead to serve as the senior portfolio-level authority for hardware architecture, interfaces, and standards across products. You will ensure a coherent hardware foundation while allowing product-specific approaches when required.

Product Managers define what and why; Product Technical Leads own the integrated solution. You will partner with the Software Technical Lead, Engineering, Production, and QA, guiding hardware decisions and driving

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in electrical, mechanical, computer or systems engineering (or related field).
• Significant hardware or systems engineering leadership for complex products.
• Experience across electrical, mechanical, compute, RF, power, thermal, networking, or related domains.
• Proven ability to lead trade studies, design reviews, and inform component decisions.
• Experience with ruggedized or defense/mission systems and low-volume manufacturing is a plus.
• US citizenship and ability to obtain Top Secret clearance is required or highly preferred.

Responsibilities

• Establish common hardware architecture principles and portfolio standards.
• Standardize components and interfaces to improve reliability and cost.
• Review architecture decisions affecting multiple products and document standards.
• Lead or participate in design reviews and trade studies, balancing performance and manufacturability.
• Act as escalation point for cross-product hardware issues and coordinate with software teams.
• Manage lifecycle, obsolescence, and supply risk across the portfolio.

Skills

Leadership experience

Trade studies & design reviews

Cross-domain hardware experience

Security clearance eligible

US citizenship

Education

Bachelor's degree in Electrical/Mechanical/Computer/Systems Engineering or related field

Job description

The Hardware Technical Lead is the senior portfolio-level technical authority for hardware architecture, common interfaces and standards, lifecycle, and manufacturability across 3dB Labs products. The role establishes a coherent hardware foundation while allowing product-specific approaches when mission or technical requirements justify them.

Product Managers own what and why; Product Technical Leads own the integrated solution for assigned products. This role owns portfolio hardware coherence and decisions affecting shared platforms, components, interfaces, or production baselines. It partners with the Software Technical Lead, Engineering, Production, and QA; Engineering leadership retains staffing and personnel management.

Key Responsibilities
Portfolio Hardware Architecture & Standards

• Establish common hardware architecture principles and standards for compute, electrical and mechanical design, power, thermal, RF, networking, connectors, and other shared interfaces as applicable.
• Identify opportunities to standardize components, platforms, and interfaces where reuse improves reliability, cost, supply resilience, production efficiency, or sustainment.
• Review major hardware and platform decisions that could affect multiple products or baselines and ensure portfolio-level standards and decisions are documented.

Product Integration & Design Governance

• Partner with Product Technical Leads early in requirements and design to ensure hardware approaches and interfaces are technically sound and portfolio-aware.
• Lead or participate in design reviews and trade studies for significant new hardware, redesigns, and technology refreshes, balancing performance, SWaP, reliability, cost, lead time, manufacturability, and integration risk.
• Serve as the technical escalation point for cross-product hardware issues and coordinate with the Software Technical Lead on drivers, compute constraints, interfaces, and hardware/software integration.

Lifecycle, Obsolescence & Supply Risk

• Maintain visibility into shared component and platform lifecycle risks, vendor end-of-life events, lead times, and supply constraints across the portfolio.
• Partner with Product Managers, Product Technical Leads, and Production to plan technology refreshes and transitions before lifecycle risks become delivery or customer disruptions.
• Support platform and component selection, make/buy and vendor evaluations, backward-compatibility decisions, and transitions between hardware baselines.

Manufacturability, Quality & Production Transition

• Partner with Production and Quality to ensure hardware can be built, tested, inspected, serviced, and sustained repeatably, with appropriate design-for-manufacture and design-for-test practices.
• Ensure hardware transitions to Production with stable designs and the required build, assembly, test, configuration, and technical data.
• Use production and field failures, root-cause analysis, and lessons learned to improve common hardware standards and prevent recurring issues across products.

Desired Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Systems Engineering, or a related technical field; advanced degree is a plus.
• Significant hardware or systems engineering experience with architecture or technical leadership responsibility for complex, integrated products.
• Demonstrated experience across electrical, mechanical, compute, RF, power, thermal, networking, or other relevant hardware domains, including design-for-manufacture and design-for-test considerations.
• Proven ability to lead trade studies and design reviews, assess technical estimates and risks, guide component/platform/vendor decisions, and mentor senior engineers and technical leads.
• Experience with ruggedized systems, RF/electronics, defense or mission systems, and low-volume/high-complexity manufacturing is highly desirable.
• Current or past US security clearance is a major plus, ability to obtain a Top Secret clearance required.

US citizenship is required for all of our positions.