Senior Software Engineer, ML Developer Platform - AI, Search & Knowledge Platforms

Senior Software Engineer, ML Developer Platform - AI, Search & Knowledge Platforms

Santa Clara, California, United States

Machine Learning and AI

Join the team that owns the vision to enable high-quality, fast, and seamless software and model delivery for Apple's Search and Recommendation products. Serving billions of queries, our self-service intelligent platform is the backbone of engineering velocity. You will drive a mission-critical function, ensuring a fast, reliable, and secure deployment journey for over 1,000 developers.

Description

Own and evolve the end-to-end Developer Platform for CI/CD and releases, ensuring a fast, reliable, and secure deployment journey for software and models. Own the technical strategy and roadmap for large-scale Developer Platform—CI/CD and release systems, aligning with business-level priorities. Lead the design and rollout of platform changes that affect 1000+ developers, from design through adoption. Identify and drive impactful KPIs (e.g., 2× faster feedback cycles, 50–70% reduction in flaky test noise, automated recovery). Partner with engineering teams to onboard new services and models onto the platform, providing self-guided and self-service tooling. d/test/release workloads on cloud or large (AWS, GCP) clusters.

Minimum Qualifications

8+ years of software engineering, including 4+ years focused on developer platforms, CI/CD, release engineering, and/or production infrastructure.

Deep hands-on ownership of large-scale CI/CD systems and build/test infrastructure (microservices, modularized stack) with a track record of designing, not just maintaining, these systems.

Strong coding in at least one systems/backend language (e.g., Python, Go), plus scripting for automation and tooling.

Expertise in containers and orchestration (Docker + Kubernetes or equivalent) and running build/test/release workloads on cloud or large (AWS, GCP) clusters.

Champion cross-team collaboration with Developers, Infra, Quality, Performance, and SRE groups. Lead 'Incident Response Rooms' to resolve time-sensitive release issues swiftly and effectively.

Proven experience running robust release processes: branching strategies, quality gates, feature flag management, staged rollouts, rollbacks, and gathering insights through post-release analysis.

Defined and owned SLOs for developer workflows: Deployment Journey—duration, success rate, flaky rate, deployment MTTResolution, release volume.

Built robust monitoring and alerting for release platforms; led root cause analyses (RCAs) and implemented sustainable fixes.

Demonstrated data-driven decision-making: used metrics and experiments to prioritize work and prove impact (e.g., "optimize the average time-to-green-build by 40%").

Preferred Qualifications

AI-driven developer productivity: Hands-on experience integrating AI/LLM capabilities into developer workflows: code review assistance, intelligent test selection, triage bots, and incident summarization.

Experience using telemetry and historical data from dev tools to drive recommendations or automation (e.g., failure analysis to accurately identify root causes and propose resolutions).

Experience with model deployments is a plus.

Pay & Benefits

At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $181,100 and $318,400, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple's discretionary employee stock programs. Apple employees are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards, and can purchase Apple stock at a discount if voluntarily participating in Apple's Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You'll also receive benefits including: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and for formal education related to advancing your career at Apple, reimbursement for certain educational expenses — including tuition. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary bonuses or commission payments as well as relocation.

Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics.

Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.