Occupation / job
Computer Hardware Engineers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
$161,740 puts Computer Hardware Engineers among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 223% above the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Pay at this level always has a gate in front of it: a residency, a bar exam, a clearance, or a decade.
76,660 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Computer Hardware Engineers is still a distinguishing thing to have.
Engineering suits people who want their work checked. Sign-off, code compliance and design review are the job, not friction added to it.
How long it takes to become one of the 76,660 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
$126,090 to $202,990 — 1.6x, or $6,408 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Computer Hardware Engineers is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The 25th percentile is $126,090, $76,070 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you resent process. Much of the day is producing evidence that the work is correct, not producing the work.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 76,660 people employed as Computer Hardware Engineers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
1.6x between $126,090 and $202,990 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $161,740 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $126,090 at the 25th percentile, $161,740 at the midpoint, $202,990 at the 75th. $76,900 separates the quarter of Computer Hardware Engineers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $202,990. Reaching it from the $161,740 midpoint is $41,250 a year; reaching it from the $126,090 that the bottom quarter of Computer Hardware Engineers earn is $76,900.
From $161,740 it is $35,650 down to the bottom quarter and $41,250 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Computer Hardware Engineers is $77.75 an hour. The quarters sit at $60.62 and $97.59, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Computer Hardware Engineers. The self-employed are excluded, so $161,740 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Computer Hardware Engineers, the hourly figure is $161,740 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else