The computer employee exemption sits alongside the executive, administrative, and professional exemptions covered in Chapter 3 — it is available under section 13(a)(1) of the Act for computer employees paid on a salary or fee basis and under section 13(a)(17) for those paid hourly at the rate that section specifies, but either route still runs through the primary duty test from Chapter 2. What makes this exemption distinct is how narrowly its primary duty is defined: the regulation does not ask whether an employee works with computers, or works in a computer-titled role, but whether the employee’s actual work falls into one of four specific duty categories. As with every exemption discussed so far, a job title carries no weight here — the regulation states plainly that because titles in the computer field “vary widely and change quickly,” they are not determinative of whether the exemption applies.

The four qualifying duties are alternatives, not a checklist an employee must clear in full — any one of them, performed as the employee’s primary duty, can support the exemption, and so can a combination of them. The first is applying systems analysis techniques, including consulting with users to figure out what hardware, software, or system specifications a project needs. The second and third both involve building or modifying computer systems or programs — one covers systems or programs generally, including prototypes built to design specifications, while the other covers programs tied specifically to machine operating systems. The fourth duty category is a combination of the first three, but only when performing that mix demands the same level of skill the individual duties would require on their own — stacking together lower-skilled tasks does not manufacture a qualifying combination.

The regulation also draws the boundary from the opposite direction, and does so by name: computer hardware manufacture and repair is expressly carved out of the exemption, even though the work is inseparable from computers. This boundary reaches further than repair technicians. An employee whose work is merely dependent on or made easier by computers and software — the regulation’s own examples are engineers and drafters who rely on computer-aided design software — is not an exempt computer professional unless that employee’s primary duty is itself systems analysis, programming, or one of the other duties above. Being skilled with computer tools is not the same as being primarily engaged in the qualifying work.