Principal Hardware Product Manager – Security Appliances

About this role

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

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