Introduction
To begin with, we need to be clear about what we mean by hardware careers and what are the most common hardware career paths then we will be able to decide which cities are best for hardware careers based on several factors. Among the most common hardware career jobs are hardware design, verification and backend positions.
Hardware design involves arranging essential hardware components into a well-defined and collaborated assembly of hardware to create and support a system’s current features and processes and any kind of expected future requirements or adjustments. Accordingly, hardware design can be considered an algorithm or a partitioning scheme that takes into consideration most of the required system’s needs by creating an assembly of subsystems that integrate to create a well built and developed system. Unlike software design, hardware design is more limited by real physical boundaries. Hardware verification involves checking for correct feature and system implementation and it hugely affects the quality, price and timing in silicon development. The hardware designing process is followed by development, testing, adjusting, collaborating and product finalization.
Hardware careers are often associated with software markets and industries, as there is a lot of collaboration between both parties to deliver the final product to be used by the customer. These careers are not only limited to computer devices or industries but it also includes automobile components and medical appliances with embedded systems. People pursuing careers in hardware usually work in labs where they spend most of their time designing, building and testing hardware. They are also required to communicate with other teams of different backgrounds and tasks to come up with a final design that would fit and work with the system as a whole. Hardware careers are mainly based on research and development to create more powerful components that are smaller in size, more power efficient and packed with potential to handle various system features.
In the following paragraphs, I will present some cities that are known for being in the lead for Hardware Manufacturing and consequently hardware careers. Mainly I will be focusing on cities in the United States and at the end I will add some cities outside the United States that are worth mentioning. Now let’s go ahead and start with cities inside the United States.
The Bay Area, California
Historically, the Bay Area in California is known for being the hub for hardware manufacturing in the west coast particularly in the field of tech manufacturing. Many cities there observed the beginning of market giants such as Mountain View, Menlo Park, Cupertino and much more. Also, the headquarters of these giants are in the bay area in California. For example, Google Headquarters is in Mountain View, Apple Headquarters is in Cupertino in Santa Clara, Intel Headquarters is in Santa Clara ... etc. All these tech companies have a large hardware manufacturing division, and for that reason, it is a good place to tackle the Hardware career there. Not only that, but there is also a good number of ventures backed startups in Hardware manufacturing. It is also home to the renowned Silicon Valley, where all inventions and hardware breakthroughs come to life. In addition, in the renowned Bay Area we can find Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Jose, Sunnyvale, San Francisco, Fremont and Milpitas. But let’s focus on Silicon Valley, that renowned region that is in the southern part of San Francisco bay area and int the northern part of California. We can’t be talking about hardware without mentioning Silicon Valley. It is considered the main international and national center for cutting edge inventions. Three main factors contributed to the success of Silicon Valley as a hardware and technology international hub. These factors are mainly the available capital ventures in the area and the research buildings housed in university areas, in addition to the constant U.S. Department of Defense investments. In 1957, the “traitorous eight” deserted William Shockley to invent the Fairchild Semiconductor, which diverted the attention of Hewlett Packard aka HP to semiconductor devices. Since then, HP was considered one of the main symbolic founders of the renowned Silicon Valley. It is not only HP that has hardware offices and divisions in Silicon Valley, other huge companies such as Microsoft (Sunnyvale office), Google (Mountain View office) and Apple (Cupertino and San Diego) are all involved in Silicon Valley as hardware manufacturers and inventors. Here is a list of some of the hardware companies that are located in Silicon Valley and that you might be familiar with:
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) in Sunnyvale
- Altera (Intel) in San Jose
- Apple Inc. in Cupertino
- Asus in Fremont
- Cisco Systems in San Jose
- Fitbit in San Francisco
- Hewlett Packard in Palo Alto
- Logitech in Newark
- Nvidia in Santa Clara
Detroit, Michigan 
“Motor City” is what people call Detroit in Michigan for the long history in car manufacturing. Detroit is the origin of many car manufacturing companies in the United States in the last century. Ford, Cadillac, General Motors, Chevrolet, Dodge and Chrysler are all examples for car manufacturing companies that were founded in Detroit as early as the mid nineteenth century. Nowadays, the car manufacturing industry does not only include mechanical components, but new technologies and inventions are integrated in the industry such as self-driving cars and cars2x communications that connect all the vehicles together with the roads and transportation infrastructure.
Seattle, Washington State
Despite the relatively smaller existence and impact of both Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle, the city has a rich history of hardware with a huge aerospace company and manufacturer, Boeing. Among those hardware corporations with offices in Seattle are:
- Nintendo in Redmond
- Linksys and Cisco
- Oculus
- Intel in the international district
- Blue origin
Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas is an industrial hub for the manufacturing industries. Numerous tech companies have offices in there; for example, Dell has its headquarters in a suburb of Austin. If you lived in Texas, you might have heard of the term Silicon Hills. Silicon Hills is the name of a group of high-tech companies that are in Austin. Among the cutting-edge industries located in Silicon Hills are:
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
- Apple Inc.
- Amazon.com
- IBM
- Silicon Labs
- Intel
- Dell (international headquarters are located in Round Rock, which is a suburb of Austin)
Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon is another well-known city for hardware manufacturing. It is known for the manufacturing of displays, printers, computer chips and many other electronic gadgets. Silicon Forest is the name of a group of companies that are involved in cutting edge technologies and hardware that are located in Portland. As you might have guessed it, the name is analogous to Silicon Valley and Silicon Hills. Hardware companies located in Portland work within a wide range of hardware industries. For example, Tektronix is specialized in test and measurement hardware, Intel is specialized in computer chips, Infocus and Pixelworks are specialized in electronic displays manufacturing and development, Hewlett Packard and Epson are specialized in printers manufacturing and development. Following is a list of some of the major hardware companies located in Portland:
- Apple Inc.
- EPSON
- Hewlett Packard
- Logitech
- Nvidia corporation
- Synopsys
Other cities worth mentioning outside the United States:
Hamburg
In the European region, Hamburg is considered one of the best places for hardware and computer careers. It is Germany’s 2nd largest city and the 6th city in Europe. It currently hosts lots of innovative tech scenes and sponsors a wide range of startups.
Eindhoven
The Dutch city of Eindhoven is another city that produces about 23 patents per 100,000 residents. It is well-known for its industrial capabilities. In 2013 and according to Forbes, Eindhoven is considered the most innovative and inventive city in the whole world. In addition, the city is considered the best among European countries and even the world for leading high tech hardware careers. This is mainly due to a couple of reasons such as the capability of the high-level research facilities to produce and test hardware prototypes as well as the inventive and innovative behavior of the public residing in the city.
Munich
Germany is coming strong in this list with another city. Munich is considered a main hub for business in Europe. It is home to huge international companies and businesses such as Allianz, Siemens and BMW. This makes it one of the favorable cities in the world to pursue hardware careers whether in computer or other industries. Munich is not only home to multinational companies but also small startups across different industries such as virtual reality, media, mobility, computer, finance and loT.
Conclusion
After presenting some of the best cities inside and outside the United States known for leading hardware careers, it is all up to you to decide. Obviously, Germany is one of the best countries outside the US that offer a high variety of opportunities in HW career, however, the language factor is very important. It is a must to be fluent in the German language to be able to land any technical job specifically in the hardware career. I am sure there are a lot of questions in your mind now. I will be glad to answer all your questions and see you in the next one.
References:
- Sokanu. “What Does a Computer Hardware Engineer Do?” CareerExplorer, CareerExplorer, 1 May 2020, www.careerexplorer.com/careers/computer-hardware-engineer
- “The 10 Best States For Lead Hardware Engineers In 2020.” BEST STATES FOR A LEAD HARDWARE ENGINEER, Zippia, 18 May 2020, www.zippia.com/lead-hardware-engineer-jobs/best-states/
- Joyner, Jeffrey. “The Best Places for Computer Engineering Careers.” Work, 21 Nov. 2017, work.chron.com/places-computer-sengineering-careers-19874.html
- Lee, Edward A. Hardware Design, ScienceDirect Topics, 2002, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/hardware-design
- “Hardware Verification.” T&VS, 12 Oct. 2017, www.testandverification.com/solutions/hardware-verification
- “Best European Cities for Tech Jobs.” Best European Cities for Tech Jobs: Our Top 9 Picks of 2020, 2018, blog.honeypot.io/9-european-cities-for-tech-jobs-2018/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_based_in_the_San_Francisco_Bay_Area#Electronics
- https://www.reddit.com/r/SeattleWA/comments/773fec/what_is_happening_with_hardware_in_seattle_lately/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Hills#cite_note-3
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Forest
- Silicon Valley - Wikipedia
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