Hardware Technical Lead

3dB Labs; West Chester Township (OH); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

3dB Labs seeks a senior hardware engineer to shape portfolio architecture across compute, electrical, and mechanical domains. You will establish standards, drive common interfaces, and coordinate hardware decisions that impact multiple products.

Work with Product Technical Leads and Production to plan technology refreshes, manage lifecycle risks, and ensure manufacturability and testability through design-for-manufacture and design-for-test practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Computer or Systems Engineering (advanced degree a plus).
• Significant hardware or systems engineering experience with architecture or leadership responsibility for complex products.

Responsibilities

• Establish common hardware architecture principles and standards for compute, electrical and mechanical design, power, thermal, RF, networking, connectors, and other shared interfaces.
• Identify opportunities to standardize components, platforms, and interfaces to improve reliability, cost, supply resilience, production efficiency, or sustainment.
• Review major hardware and platform decisions that could affect multiple products or baselines and document portfolio-level standards and decisions.
• 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 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.
• Maintain visibility into lifecycle risks, vendor end-of-life events, lead times, and supply constraints across the portfolio.
• Plan technology refreshes and transitions with Product Managers and Production to avoid disruptions.
• Support platform and component selection, make/buy decisions, vendor evaluations, and transitions between hardware baselines.
• Ensure hardware can be built, tested, inspected, serviced, and sustained with design-for-manufacture and design-for-test practices.
• Use failures and lessons learned to improve shared hardware standards across products.

Skills

Hardware architecture

Systems engineering

Technical leadership

Design for manufacture

Design for test

RF & electronics

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Mechanical/Computer/Systems Eng

Job description

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.