WHAT DOES A HARDWARE DESIGN ENGINEER DO?
Published: Jul 22, 2025 - The Hardware Design Engineer is responsible for designing and developing next-generation BMS hardware, including electrical systems, electronic circuits, component selection, schematic design, and PCB layout. This role involves leading full lifecycle product development while conducting WCCA, FTA, DFMEA, and FMEDA analyses and coordinating hardware-software integration with firmware teams. The engineer also ensures product reliability through robust testing methods, supplier quality verification (PFMEA), and predictive reliability analysis using data tools.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Hardware Design Engineer
1. Hardware Design Engineer Roles and Responsibilities
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Work with design, verification, and validation engineers
- Design Planning: Prepare design specifications and plans to achieve targeted goals
- Circuit Optimization: Perform deep analysis of complex circuitry and optimize it for frequency, speed, area, power, and performance
- Design Review Participation: Participate in design reviews and recommend improvements
- Bug Tracking: Maintain the design environment and track and close design bugs
- Technology Utilization: Utilize the latest techniques, tools, and technologies for design activities
- Task Management: Plan and schedule assigned tasks for timely completion
- Team Communication: Contribute to open discussions and presentations
- Interpersonal Communication: Communicate regularly with other team members
2. Hardware Design Engineer Duties and Roles
- Mechanical Design: Actively involved in the mechanical design of various products.
- Vendor Coordination: Interface with hardware vendors on finalizing components/subcomponents required in product development.
- BOM Management: Identify BOM and reduce BOM costs for prototypes and products.
- Manual Assembly: Responsible for the manual assembly of tablets of smaller volumes and managing the production of larger volumes.
- Design Review: Review CAD design and drawings, PCB layout, and schematic design across products in terms of positioning, alignment, form factor, and styling.
- Supply Identification: Appropriately identify supplies and materials involved in the product and identify replacements.
- Cable Selection: Identify appropriate cables and connectors between components and subcomponents, addressing the compatibility attributes.
- Outsourcing Oversight: Lead the outsourced component development and testing process.
- Product Innovation: Continuously innovate and propose changes learned from initial prototypes, applicable to the final product.
- Prototype Evaluation: Identify the design flaws in the prototypes and escalate to management immediately.
3. Hardware Design Engineer Responsibilities and Key Tasks
- Comm Electronics: Design Communication Electronics for CAN, LIN, FlexRay, SENT, etc.
- Circuit Design: Design specific analog or digital circuits fulfilling automotive requirements, where no common design is available.
- Spec Compliance: Ensure design compliance with the specification
- Component Testing: Select and test new electronic components
- Module Testing: Perform module validations
- Process Planning: Plan, document, and organize the development processes
- Resource Planning: Generate HW timing plan, design resource planning
- Design Docs: Create and maintain design documents and design files
- Quality Standards: Follow and apply the worldwide quality manual and procedures
- ECU Support: Support ECU designers for project-specific implementation of communication modules
4. Hardware Design Engineer Roles and Details
- Hardware Development: Enhance existing and/or develop new hardware designs/technology that enables the launch of new products.
- Requirement Analysis: Understand customer requirements and communicate them to cross-functional teams, and act as the liaison for program activities as appropriate.
- Technical Solutions: Provide technical solutions to customer problems
- Quality Review: Review project deliverables to ensure quality levels are met
- Schedule Management: Develop and control the schedule and direct the work in order to effectively manage time.
- Status Reporting: Provide regular updates on development and support activities.
- Process Compliance: Follow the defined processes and follow the Hardware Development Life Cycle Model
- Concept Review: Review technical concepts of all electronics projects, including equipment specification and design.
- Issue Resolution: Provide appropriate resolution of issues that are being faced and ensure smooth execution
5. Hardware Design Engineer Key Accountabilities
- System Analysis: Understand system-level requirements and use cases.
- Requirement Breakdown: Interpret, break down, and implement them
- Digital Design: Digitally design hardware solutions and be responsible for implementation, including reviews.
- Radio Design: Understand radio design
- Design Verification: Work on design integration and verification
- Cost Optimization: Work with cost optimization, so a sense of TK optimized design is valued
- Timely Delivery: Deliver design with high quality within the agreed time frame and TK target
- Doc Authoring: Be the author of the required design and verification documents
- Board Integration: Understand Board Bring Up and functional integration, and cooperate with people from other functional teams (SW, FPGA, ASIC, PTD, etc) to complete these tasks
- Yield Support: Support customer and production sites in case of low yield issues
6. Hardware Design Engineer General Responsibilities
- BMS Hardware: Design and develop next-gen BMS hardware
- Electrical Design: Design and evaluate electrical systems, electronic circuit boards, components, and applications, including schematic design, component selection, and PCB layout
- Lifecycle Process: Follow the full life cycle of the product development process.
- Risk Analysis: Develop and contribute to WCCA, FTA, DFMEA, and FMEDA analysis
- Testing Methods: Design testing methods and test the components, circuits, and complete PCBs
- HW-SW Integration: Lead the integration of hardware and software by working closely with firmware/embedded software engineers in the team
- Product Reliability: Ensure product robustness and reliability, and support efforts to verify supplier quality, ensuring PFMEA is completed and KPIs are met.
- Data Analysis: Use data analysis tools to predict product reliability
7. Hardware Design Engineer Role Purpose
- PCB Design: Responsible for designing schematic/PCB and prototyping electronic boards
- Prototype Testing: Responsible for testing prototypes electrically and writing test routines in C
- Dev Support: Provide support to other software engineers during the development of the product
- Production Issues: Anticipate and correct issues that may impact mass production
- SoC Design: Microarchitecture, design of an SoC
- uArch Development: Work with the Arch team to develop the uArch and RTL
- Design Methodology: Develop the design methodology
- Timing Analysis: Synthesis, Static Timing Analysis, Equivalence checking
- PD Support: Work with the back-end team on floorplanning and other PD-related activities
- Validation Support: Work with the verification, emulation teams
- Chip Bring-Up: Help with chip validation, bring-up, and characterization
8. Hardware Design Engineer Essential Functions
- HW/FW Development: Develop new and maintain existing HW/FW implementations
- Architecture Design: Develop and work with HW/FW architecture solutions
- Process Improvement: Take part in developing and improving processes (methods and instructions) and tools used within HW development
- Stakeholder Interaction: Interact with support functions and stakeholders of the Control and Communication Platform
- C&P Hardware: Make control and protection (C&P) hardware regarding design, testing, and installation
- Customer Delivery: Work together with customers, both internally and externally, to ensure delivery is according to their requirements and standards
- Team Collaboration: Collaborate and network with engineering colleagues, sharing best practices across different projects and disciplines
- Field Support: Get the chance to travel the world, commissioning HVDC systems and providing support on-site
9. Hardware Design Engineer Additional Details
- HW Architecture: Create a detailed hardware product architecture and structured design from a defined Product requirements document.
- Schematic Design: Conduct circuit requirements to create a formal schematic design and validate design choices.
- Circuit Design: Design electronic circuits using suitable components, systems, and equipment.
- Product Docs: Prepare product operational documentation to support software development.
- System Debugging: Debug complex embedded systems.
- BMS Design: Design, analyze, and build embedded hardware-level digital/analog circuits, especially BMS - Battery Management Systems to monitor and control lithium batteries, as well as PCBs for controllers.
- PCB Process: Follow up the PCB process from beginning to end, design-review-layout-production-assembly-test, and certification.
- Cross-Team Work: Work closely with material sourcing, PCB layout, embedded software, and manufacturing engineers to ensure the product is reliable and easy to manufacture.
- Field Testing: Field test of the final circuit designs.
- Customer Support: Customer training and knowledge transfer.
10. Hardware Design Engineer Roles
- HW Development: Participate in the development of consumer hardware.
- Product Design: Design and develop consumer hardware and its sub-components from concept to mass production.
- Board Design: Develop the motherboard and/or peripheral boards of the systems.
- Issue Resolution: Grow resolution of cross-functional issues, including those related to architecture (performance, power consumption, thermal behavior), production (quality, failure analysis, manufacturing), and development (schematic design, PCB layout, and overall system integration).
- System Bring-Up: Work with engineering and qualification teams on system bring-up, and the design validation and support team in debugging and failure analysis investigation.
- Feasibility Study: Undertake design feasibility studies and investigations, identifying and evaluating possible implementations for the customer's requirements
- Design Ownership: Design responsibility for circuit components and/or complete PCBAs, and the owner of the release process
- Altium Design: Circuit design in Altium Designer