What is a Computer Hardware Engineer?

My goal with this article is to help educate you on everything there is to know about computer hardware engineers. Computer hardware engineering is a lucrative field in which you can make upwards $140,000 annually. I will be breaking this down into the five sections listed below:

• What is a computer hardware engineer?
• Computer hardware engineer salary and education requirements
• Top 5 computer hardware engineer schools & degree programs
• Explaining the computer hardware engineer job description

By the end of reading this article you should be well informed on everything having to do with becoming a computer hardware engineer.

What is a computer hardware engineer?

A computer hardware engineer is essentially mixing electronic engineering with programming of computer science. Sure, you can go for either of those specific majors -but putting everything together you get to be in this exciting field.

You get to do a lot of stuff that the majority of general public just doesn’t understand. It is fulfilling to start a hardware project from design concepts to having a finished product. If you enjoy hands-on types of jobs than becoming a computer hardware engineer would be a good fit for you.

Salary and education requirements

Did you know, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that in 2023 alone there were 83,300 computer hardware engineer jobs? How incredible! You might also like to know that the median salary for a computer hardware engineer was $48.52 per hour. Sound like a field you want to be a part of? Of course it does! We have a comprehensive list of annual salaries for computer engineers on our homepage.

Most colleges require that you have a high school diploma or G.E.D. before applying for your degree. Although not necessary, it would be safe to say that having a higher high school GPA (grade point average) would assist in getting into a good college program. There is nothing wrong with starting with a smaller school such as Ivy Tech and then transferring to one of the more prestigious colleges. You also shouldn’t be ashamed of having a degree from a lesser known school.

What matters is that you are doing something to advance your knowledge and career towards becoming a computer hardware engineer.

Top 5 schools & degree programs

Are you exciting about starting your career in computer engineering? If you’re considering going this route you should look into different schools and computer hardware engineer degree programs. Below you will find information on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University, California Institute of Technology, the University of California-Berkeley, as well as Georgia Institute of Technology. We have provided the information from each respective college’s about/department pages.

#1 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department is the largest department at MIT, preparing over 300 graduate and undergraduate students each year to become leaders in diverse career fields such as academia, bio-medical technology, finance, consulting, law, nanotechnology and more. MIT EECS consistently ranks top by the the U.S. News and World Reports and is known globally for its world class faculty creating the best possible education, which is based on their innovative and award winning research.

Web address: https://www.eecs.mit.edu/about/

#2 Stanford University

Stanford Engineering has been at the forefront of innovation for nearly a century, creating pivotal technologies that have transformed the worlds of information technology, communications, health care, energy, business and beyond. The school’s faculty, students and alumni have established thousands of companies and laid the technological and business foundations for Silicon Valley. Today, the school continues to seek solutions to important global problems and educate leaders who will make the world a better place.

Web address: https://engineering.stanford.edu/about

#3 California Institute of Technology

EE at Caltech has a century-long record of excellence, innovation and training many distinguished leaders in the field. As a discipline, EE has had a huge impact on the technologies that define modern-day life and society. EE at Caltech emphasizes both the fundamentals of electronics and systems, as well as acknowledging the multi-disciplinary nature of the field.

Web address: https://www.ee.caltech.edu/about

#4 University of California-Berkeley

EECS spans all of information science and technology and has applications in a broad range of fields, from medicine to the social sciences. Indeed, many members of our department are housed in the headquarters building of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), which involves researchers from many departments across the Berkeley campus and also at other UC campuses working together to develop technological solutions to societal-scale problems such as sustainable energy, health care, and safety and security. CITRIS is just one of many research centers through which we innovate and transfer new technologies while creating new knowledge. Our faculty and alumni have started not only many companies but also new industries based on client/server computing, electronic design automation, RISC (reduced instruction set computing) processors, relational databases, RAID (redundant array of independent disks) servers, and portable communication, to name just a few examples.

Web address: https://eecs.berkeley.edu/about/

#5 Georgia Institute of Technology

The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology is located in the heart of Atlanta, one of the fastest growing markets for high-tech development and an ethnically diverse and welcoming city.

Web address: https://ece.gatech.edu/about/about-ece

Job description

No doubt you’re excited about your future IT career. We already covered what a computer hardware engineer actually does.. but what about an actual computer hardware engineer job description? What should you be looking for job~wise? Let’s find out.

It would be easy to classify a job description as follows: A computer hardware engineer is responsible for anything from circuit board design to prototyping computer hardware end beyond. They ensure that hardware is stable for programmers to develop and run software applications.