This paper is focused on the identification of a relation between surface hardening and roughness induced by ultrasonic shot peening. A method that dissociates the influence of roughness from the value of the true macroscopic hardness is applied to AISI 316L stainless steel specimens treated using different processing conditions. The true macroscopic hardness is identified and used to determine the surface roughness parameter and scale that give the best relation between hardness and roughness. A relation is identified between the five point pit height S5V roughness parameter (local depth of roughness) and hardness using a high-pass filter with a cut-off of 100 µm. This power function was identified at a scale that corresponds to the size of the shot impacts