Principal Hardware Product Manager – Security Appliances

OPSWAT, a global leader in IT, OT, and ICS critical infrastructure cybersecurity, delivers an end-to-end platform that gives public and private sector organizations and enterprises the critical advantage needed to protect their complex networks, secure their devices, and ensure compliance. Over the last 20 years our commitment to innovative technology has earned the trust of more than 1,700 organizations, governments, and institutions globally, solidifying our role in protecting the world’s critical infrastructure and securing our way of life.

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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