This paper demonstrates that laser-machined stainless steel surfaces exhibit excellent hydrophobicity even with relatively simple microstructural designs. 17-4 PH stainless steel was laser machined to produce channels or pillars (100 μm pitch), with either uniform heights (100 μm) or alternating heights (between 100 μm and 50 μm). During machining, the high power laser beams also created sub-micron features on the microstructures, leading to hierarchical, multiscale surface structures. These surfaces showed good hydrophobicity: measured static contact angles of water on these surfaces are over 130° without any coating, compared to near 70° on the original steel surface without the multi-scale surface structures. Since liquid-repellent surfaces have many engineering applications but are often difficult to produce on common metals such as steel, these results have potential industrial benefits.