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About the Role

We are looking for a Principal Hardware Product Manager to own the strategy, roadmap, and lifecycle of our security appliance portfolio. Our appliances sit at the front line of our customers' most sensitive environments - critical infrastructure, defense, government, and enterprise OT/IT boundaries - and the physical platform is as much a part of the security promise as the software running on it.

This role is the single point of accountability for the hardware itself: from market and customer requirements, through industrial design and NPI, to certification, mass production, sustaining, and end-of-life. You will operate at the intersection of hardware engineering, supply chain, software product, and compliance, translating business strategy into a hardware portfolio that is differentiated, certifiable, manufacturable, and serviceable at scale.

This is a builder role for someone who thinks in product, speaks the language of EEs and supply chain, and is comfortable owning million-dollar BOM and inventory decisions alongside go-to-market positioning.

Key Responsibilities

Hardware Roadmap & Lifecycle Ownership

• Own the multi-year hardware roadmap across the appliance portfolio - SKU strategy, form factors, performance tiers, refresh cadence, and platform consolidation.
• Drive the full NPI lifecycle (Concept Proto EVT DVT PVT Mass Production) in partnership with hardware engineering and operations, owning gate criteria, schedule, and go/no-go decisions.
• Manage product lifecycle stages end-to-end - General Availability, sustaining, End-of-Sale, End-of-Service, and End-of-Life - including last-time-buy planning, customer migration paths, and field replacement strategy.
• Define and publish lifecycle policies (support windows, RMA terms, spare-parts SLAs) that customers, sales, and support can rely on.
• Own the appliance P&L levers the PM controls: BOM cost targets, ASP, margin, attach rates, refresh-driven revenue, and inventory exposure.

Hardware Innovation & Competitive Differentiation

• Translate customer, market, and threat-landscape insights into hardware requirements - performance, ports/throughput, tamper resistance, secure boot, TPM/HSM integration, ruggedization, and physical security features.
• Run structured competitive analysis against peer security appliance vendors; identify and close hardware gaps and create defensible differentiation.
• Evaluate and pilot emerging technologies - new silicon (x86, ARM, custom acceleration), networking interfaces, storage, AI/ML acceleration, secure enclaves - and decide what graduates into the roadmap.
• Own the appliance design language and customer experience: chassis, indicators, serviceability, deployment ergonomics for both SOC operators and non-technical field users.
• Build the hardware business case for each new platform: TAM/SAM, target customer profile, pricing, projected volumes, payback period, and risk register.

Certifications & Regulatory Compliance

• Own the certification roadmap across the portfolio: FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria / NIAP (against the relevant Protection Profiles, e.g., NDcPP), DoDIN APL, FCC/CE/UKCA, UL/IEC 62368, RoHS/REACH, and country-specific marks.
• Sequence certifications against customer demand and revenue impact - scope, budget, schedule, and lab selection - and manage them as first-class roadmap items, not afterthoughts.
• Coordinate with software PM and compliance engineering on dependencies between hardware certifications and the cryptographic modules / OS / firmware they validate against.
• Maintain a certification matrix by SKU and by market, and ensure sales, marketing, and customers always have accurate, current claims.
• Plan for recertification, delta evaluations, and assurance maintenance as platforms evolve and standards (e.g., FIPS 140-2 140-3, new PP versions) change.

Resourcing & Cross-Functional Program Management

• Build the resourcing plan for each hardware program: engineering headcount, ODM/EMS partner allocation, lab time, certification budget, and tooling investment.
• Defend program priorities in portfolio reviews; make explicit trade-offs between competing hardware initiatives, sustaining work, and certification load.
• Track NRE, tooling, and prototype budgets with finance and operations; flag overruns early and propose recovery options.
• Run a clear cadence of program reviews, gate reviews, and exec readouts so leadership always knows the state of each platform without having to ask.

Supply Chain Collaboration

• Partner with supply chain and operations on sourcing strategy, ODM/EMS selection, dual-sourcing, geographic diversification, and tariff/trade-compliance posture.
• Co-own demand forecasting and the rolling S&OP signal for each appliance SKU, balancing stock-out risk against inventory write-off exposure.
• Lead the response to component EOL notices, allocation events, and supply disruptions - assess design/certification impact of substitutions, drive Last-Time-Buy sizing, and approve alternate-component qualifications.
• Set and track quality KPIs with manufacturing partners - DPPM, FPY, RMA rate, MTBF - and drive corrective action when they drift.
• Own cost-down programs in mature platforms: component renegotiation, design-for-cost revisions, test-time optimization, and logistics restructuring.

Collaboration with Hardware Engineering

• Be the voice of the customer and the market inside the hardware engineering team - clear, prioritized, technically credible requirements, not wish lists.
• Co-author the PRD and platform spec with engineering leads; sign off on trade-offs between performance, cost, schedule, certifiability, and serviceability.
• Stay close to the technical work - attend design reviews, read schematics-level summaries, understand thermal/power/EMC constraints - enough to make informed product calls, without trying to do engineering's job.
• Drive HW/SW integration decisions with software PMs and firmware leads: secure boot chain, provisioning, telemetry, in-field update strategy, and diagnostics.
• Champion serviceability and field experience as a first-class design requirement - installation, replacement, diagnostics, and on-site support workflows.

Qualifications

Required

• 10+ years of product management experience, of which at least 6 in hardware product management for networked, embedded, or appliance-class products, with a track record of leading multiple platforms from concept to mass production.
• Deep, working understanding of the NPI process and gate model (Concept, Proto, EVT, DVT, PVT, MP) and the artifacts and decisions at each gate.
• Strong commercial instincts: comfortable owning BOM cost, ASP, margin, and inventory exposure as product KPIs - not just feature lists.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to brief executives, write a defensible business case, and run a productive cross-functional program review.
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field - or equivalent practical experience.

Strongly Preferred

• Domain experience in cybersecurity products - network security (NGFW, IDS/IPS, segmentation), OT/ICS security, USB/peripheral security, secure gateways, or data diodes.
• Familiarity with public sector and defense procurement: DoDIN APL, CSfC, federal channel motions, and how certification status drives deal flow.
• Exposure to ruggedized, air-gapped, or critical-infrastructure deployments and the constraints they impose on hardware design (environmental, EMC, supply chain provenance).
• Familiarity with secure hardware primitives: TPM, HSM, secure enclaves, secure boot, anti-tamper, and supply-chain integrity controls (e.g., SBOM for hardware, attestation).
• MBA or equivalent commercial training is a plus, but a strong track record matters more.

What Success Looks Like in the First 12 Months

• A clear, published 24-month hardware roadmap with explicit positioning, target customer segments, certification plan, and NPI schedule for each platform.
• A documented lifecycle policy adopted across product, sales, support, and operations, with no ambiguity on EOS/EOL dates or migration paths.
• At least one platform shipped or de-risked through a major NPI gate, on cost and on schedule.
• A certification matrix that sales can trust and that proactively unlocks at least one new market segment or named customer opportunity.
• A measurably tighter feedback loop with supply chain - fewer surprise EOL events, faster substitution cycles, and a defensible inventory posture.

How We Work

We expect hardware PMs to operate as owners. That means making the call on trade-offs, not escalating every decision; writing things down so the organization can move faster; saying no to good ideas when they don't fit the strategy; and bringing the business case before the wish list. We don't expect you to know everything on day one - we do expect you to be the person the company turns to for an answer on this portfolio within your first two quarters.
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