Lead Infrastructure Software Engineer

APPLE; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple in the United Kingdom is seeking a backend engineer to join the infra group responsible for the next-generation platform powering iCloud and backend services. You will build API-driven services with precision and resilience, and have ownership over projects across time zones.

Experience in distributed systems, leadership of projects or small teams, and expertise with modern languages is essential to deliver production-impacting work.

Qualifications

• Proven backend software engineer with experience in Golang (preferred), C++, Java or Python.
• Successful track-record leading projects from design to launch.
• Deep understanding of multi-threading and distributed applications.
• Knowledge of distributed system concepts (CAP, microservices, self-healing).
• Experience with SDLC, CI/CD, testing, and Agile development.
• Understanding of containerization, virtualization, and agents.

Responsibilities

• Lead projects from design to launch in fast-changing environments.
• Develop API-driven services with precision and resilience.
• Collaborate across timezones to deliver production-impacting work.

Skills

Project leadership

Distributed systems

Multi-threading

CI/CD

APIs

Tools

Kubernetes

OpenStack

MAAS

xCat

Netbox

Tinkerbell

CloudStack

Puppet

Chef

Ansible

Cassandra

Redis

Memcached

React

Angular

jQuery

Job description

Summary

Weekly Hours: 35

We build and support new and existing critical infrastructural systems and frameworks that provide services like structured and unstructured storage, caching, queueing, searching, and much more at hyperscale. These form the platform upon which many iCloud and other backend systems at Apple are built. The team is responsible for the next-generation platform that will power Apple's infrastructural services. These services operate at extremely large scale and store exabytes of data. The platform supports a variety of services based on open-source software, such as Kubernetes, Cassandra, Zookeeper, Kafka, Redis, etc., alongside internally developed services.

Description

We are looking for a creative, versatile, and passionate engineer to join this group. You will have significant individual responsibility and influence over the direction the core platform takes for years to come. You will create API-driven services with extraordinary precision, delightful features, and resilient designs that "just work." Your engineering will impact hundreds of millions of users and be essential to the success of some of the most visible current and future Apple features. The successful candidate must have experience in software development, distributed systems, and technical leadership. They must have experience technically leading projects or small teams to deliver on time in fast-changing environments, including working across multiple timezones to deliver and launch production-impacting projects.

Minimum Qualifications

• Proven experience as a backend internet services software engineer in a high-level language such as Golang (preferred), C++, Java, or Python.
• Successful track-record and proven experience of leading projects from design to launch, using business needs to determine velocity and scope.
• Deep understanding of multi-threading concepts and design of highly concurrent and distributed applications.
• Understanding of distributed system concepts including the CAP Theorem, microservices, and self-healing architectures.
• Knowledge of SDLC, including continuous integration, testing methodologies, TDD, and agile development.
• Understanding of infrastructure foundational concepts such as containerization, virtualization, and agents.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience participating in on-call rotations, incident response, and post-incident review processes for production services.
• Experience with development within the Kubernetes ecosystem, including operator framework and controllers.
• Exposure to structured or unstructured storage or caching layers such as Cassandra, Redis, or Memcache.
• Experience with large-scale server orchestration (OpenStack Ironic, Metal3, MAAS, xCat, Netbox, Tinkerbell, Cloudstack).
• Experience with UI frameworks such as React, Angular or JQuery
• Exposure to cloud services (AWS S3/EC2/CloudFront/Steps or equivalent).
• Exposure to server bootstrap and associated security (PXE, BIOS, TPM, secure boot, trusted computing)
• Exposure to configuration management and fleet orchestration via Puppet, Chef, Ansible, or similar.

At Apple, we're not all the same. And that's our greatest strength. We draw on the differences in who we are, what we've experienced and how we think. Because to create products that serve everyone, we believe in including everyone. Therefore, we are committed to treating all applicants fairly and equally. As a registered Disability Confident employer, we will work with applicants to make any reasonable accommodations. Apple will consider for employment all qualified applicants with criminal backgrounds in a manner consistent with applicable law. Learn more

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