I just wanted to update the thread with the final resolution. We ended up waiting until Balena supported udev rules and then implemented them accordingly. Since then, we’ve had no issues of this nature. The decision to wait for Balena came down to if we wanted to implement a “hacky” solution to solve the problem or just wait until a cleaner path became available. Our fix in the meantime was to just control the order of the devices being plugged in. We’d let the device boot and then after a few seconds plug in the USB adapters.
"SUBSYSTEMS==\"usb\", SUBSYSTEM==\"net\", ACTION==\"add\", ATTRS{removable}==\"removable\", ATTRS{manufacturer}==\"Realtek\", ATTRS{product}==\"802.11n NIC\", NAME=\"usb-wireless\"\n"
A similar rule was created for the “usb-ethernet” device.