Principal Hardware Product Manager – Security Appliances

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.
• 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 and customer migration paths.
• Define and publish lifecycle policies (support windows, RMA terms, spare-parts SLAs).
• Own the appliance P&L levers: 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.
• Evaluate and pilot emerging technologies — new silicon (x86, ARM, custom acceleration), networking interfaces, storage, AI/ML acceleration, secure enclaves.
• Own the appliance design language and customer experience: chassis, indicators, serviceability, deployment ergonomics.
• 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: FIPS 140-3, Common Criteria / NIAP, DoDIN APL, FCC/CE/UKCA, UL/IEC 62368, RoHS/REACH, and country-specific marks.
• Sequence certifications against customer demand and revenue impact; manage as first-class roadmap items.
• Coordinate with software PM and compliance engineering on dependencies between hardware certifications and cryptographic modules / OS / firmware.
• Maintain a certification matrix by SKU and by market.

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 trade-offs between competing hardware initiatives.
• Track NRE, tooling, and prototype budgets with finance and operations.
• Run program reviews, gate reviews, and exec readouts.

Supply Chain Collaboration

• Partner with supply chain and operations on sourcing strategy, ODM/EMS selection, dual-sourcing, geographic diversification, and tariff/trade-compliance.
• Co-own demand forecasting and the rolling S&OP signal for each appliance SKU.
• Lead response to component EOL notices, allocation events, and supply disruptions.
• Set and track quality KPIs with manufacturing partners — DPPM, FPY, RMA rate, MTBF.
• Own cost-down programs in mature platforms.

Collaboration with Hardware Engineering

• Be the voice of the customer and the market inside the hardware engineering team.
• Co-author the PRD and platform spec with engineering leads.
• Attend design reviews, read schematics-level summaries, understand thermal/power/EMC constraints.
• Drive HW/SW integration decisions: secure boot chain, provisioning, telemetry, in-field update strategy, and diagnostics.
• Champion serviceability and field experience as a first-class design requirement.

Requirements

• 10+ years of product management experience, of which at least 6 in hardware product management for networked, embedded, or appliance-class products.
• Deep understanding of the NPI process and gate model (Concept, Proto, EVT, DVT, PVT, MP).
• Strong commercial instincts: comfortable owning BOM cost, ASP, margin, and inventory exposure as product KPIs.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to brief executives and write a defensible business case.
• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field — or equivalent practical experience.

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.
• Exposure to ruggedized, air-gapped, or critical-infrastructure deployments.