An IoT device maker sells hardware that talks to the cloud, so electronics, firmware, app and support teams must work as one. The people strain comes from mixed skills, field failures and fast-moving product plans.
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Share your requirementsAn IoT device maker builds products that sense, connect and report, such as trackers, smart meters, home devices or industrial gateways. The company needs hardware designers, firmware developers, cloud and mobile app engineers, testers and a small production or contract assembly team. A device may be in the field for years, so over-the-air updates, support calls and returns keep teams busy after launch. Roadmaps change with customer feedback and funding. Founders manage all of this with a young team, and the risk is that hardware and software people work to different calendars, pay and expectations. See also HR for manufacturing.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in IoT device makers. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Software ships on short cycles while hardware waits for boards and certificates, and each side feels the other is slow.
A batch problem at a customer site sends firmware and support people to firefight, and planned features slip.
App developers can easily move to software firms for higher pay, while hardware engineers are rare and slow to replace.
Teams rebuild work they just finished, and motivation drops when priorities shift without explanation.
Customer complaints reach engineers directly, and nobody tracks which issues recur or who solves them.
The first engineers hold design, hiring and support together and burn out before the company can add a second line of managers.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Organisation Design; Recruitment and Talent Acquisition. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for manufacturing, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when, and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes, one for complaints, one for conduct, kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why, and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a IoT device makers business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A shared calendar of hardware milestones, firmware releases and app updates so each team sees the others' constraints.
A shared calendar of hardware milestones, firmware releases and app updates so each team sees the others' constraints. The hr strategy and workforce planning work covers this.
Role descriptions for hardware, firmware, cloud and support with a transparent path.
Role descriptions for hardware, firmware, cloud and support with a transparent path. See role design and job descriptions.
A named support rotation with a log of field issues and a review of the repeats on an agreed schedule.
A named support rotation with a log of field issues and a review of the repeats on an agreed schedule.
A short note on why the plan changed and what it means for each person, before the first rumour.
A short note on why the plan changed and what it means for each person, before the first rumour.
Start searches for hardware and embedded roles early and keep software roles steady.
Start searches for hardware and embedded roles early and keep software roles steady. See recruitment process consulting.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. Work through the checks using a recent operating period. The time needed depends on the records you hold; note missing evidence and use the findings to choose a priority.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Clear roles across hardware, firmware, cloud and support in a small company.
A hiring routine that handles rare hardware skills and quick software searches.
Hiring and team structure planned against the product roadmap.
Reasons to stay for early engineers who carry design and support together.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in manufacturing, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why the best operator can struggle as shift supervisor, what it costs the line, and a practical way to choose, prepare and back new supervisors in any kind of plant.
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How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
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A founder's guide to building job grades, titles and billing levels for a growing IT services firm, with a step-by-step method and a grade description outline.
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How a D2C founder can test a performance marketing hire on real work, ignore weak signals such as dashboard screenshots, and run a fair process.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Share one planning calendar, hold a short joint review each week and name a single owner for each release. Make constraints visible so neither team feels ignored.
You can use one structure with different market ranges. Compare each role to its own market and write down the reasons so people see the logic.
Run a support rotation, log issues and review repeats weekly. Engineers on rotation are protected from other work.
Explain the reason, show what is paused and what is not and ask the team for concerns. Constant change without explanation costs trust.
Define the real work first, then hire for it. Short interviews with a practical task work well for firmware and app roles.
We would look at how hardware and software calendars connect, how many hours went to field support last month and which roles have no written description. A good first piece of work is a cross-discipline role and grade structure. Scope is agreed in writing afterwards.
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