For decades in Silicon Valley, hardware engineers were the overlooked nerds of tech. They wore dad jeans, clunky tennis shoes, and quietly designed chips while software engineers soaked up the glamour, stock grants, and sky-high salaries. The AI boom is flipping that script. According to Levels.fyi data, hardware engineer compensation at the entry and mid-career levels is growing two to three times faster than software pay. Companies building the physical infrastructure of AI (Nvidia, Broadcom,