Senior Software Engineer — Real-Time Data Pipelines

Apple Inc.; Greater London; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. in London is seeking an experienced data systems engineer to design, build and operate large-scale distributed pipelines and real-time streaming applications powering Apple Music, Shazam, Apple Podcasts and Fitness+ services.

You will collaborate with product, data science and analytics teams to translate complex requirements into robust datasets, metrics and insights, while driving technical direction and ensuring reliability across high-throughput systems.

Qualifications

• Experience designing, building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Fluency in Java or Scala and a strong grasp of big-data fundamentals.
• Experience with Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, Iceberg or Cassandra.
• Experience gathering requirements and turning ambiguous business needs into clear technical specifications.
• Focus on quality and craftsmanship: write well-tested, maintainable code.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and evolve distributed compute frameworks, data pipelines and real-time streaming applications that process billions of data points per day.
• Turn questions into specs: translate partner needs into clear datasets, metrics and requirements.
• Deliver on cross-functional projects with engineering, product, data science and analytics teams to build datasets, metrics and insights.
• Drive technical direction from discovery to production, balancing cost, complexity and performance.
• Run production systems with on-call responsibilities and harden systems against failures.
• Mentor engineers and champion testing and engineering best practices.

Skills

Distributed systems

Java/Scala

Big data

Requirements gathering

Code quality/testing

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/SE

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Spark

Trino

Iceberg

Cassandra

Kubernetes

Docker

Job description

Apple Inc. in London is seeking an experienced data systems engineer to design, build and operate large-scale distributed pipelines and real-time streaming applications powering Apple Music, Shazam, Apple Podcasts and Fitness+ services.

You will collaborate with product, data science and analytics teams to translate complex requirements into robust datasets, metrics and insights, while driving technical direction and ensuring reliability across high-throughput systems.