AI/ML - Applied Research Engineer, Machine Translation

Apple; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 80,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a forward-thinking company at the forefront of AI and machine translation technology! As an Applied Research Engineer, you'll play a pivotal role in enhancing human-computer interaction through innovative solutions that bridge language gaps. Your expertise in programming and machine learning will help develop high-quality model assets for various languages, impacting products like the Translate App and system-wide translation features. Collaborate with a dynamic team to manage data projects and improve translation quality, ensuring that cutting-edge technology is accessible to all users. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to groundbreaking advancements in AI and make a difference in the world.

Qualifications

• Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or Java.
• Good knowledge of ML and NLP applications.
• Experience with large scale data processing.

Responsibilities

• Develop and optimize solutions for scalable model assets.
• Manage data acquisition projects and train machine translation models.
• Drive evaluation criteria for translation quality.

Skills

Python

C++

Java

Machine Learning

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Data Processing (Spark)

Communication Skills

Tools

GCP

AWS

Job description

AI/ML - Applied Research Engineer, Machine Translation

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States Machine Learning and AI

Summary

Posted: Mar 18, 2025

Role Number: 200595628

Would you like to play a critical part in the next revolution of human-computer interaction? The Apple Machine Translation team is building groundbreaking technology that enables connecting people across language barriers. We are looking for an Applied Research Engineer who is passionate about developing and optimizing solutions to create, maintain and ship scalable and high-quality model assets for a multitude of languages that power Apple's Machine Translation products such as Translate App, Safari web translation and system-wide translation.

Description

Apple's Machine Translation is embedded into several products across the iOS, iPadOS, macOS and watchOS ecosystems: from Translate App that is used to communicate across different languages to system-wide translation that allows you to quickly translate any highlighted text into an ever growing list of languages. Your role will be instrumental in applying and improving data and model training pipelines that allow for rapid expansion into supporting new languages and raising the bar for translation quality in shipped models. You will be part of a motivated and dynamic team that is responsible for managing data acquisition projects, training neural machine translation models, and driving evaluation criteria that help to establish an unprecedented translation quality in all of Apple's MT products.

Minimum Qualifications

1. Strong programming and software engineering skills (Python, C++, Java, or equivalent)
2. Good ML knowledge and modeling expertise in the context of NLP applications such as LLM, MT, ASR etc
3. Experience with large scale data processing (Spark, or equivalent), data management and analytics
4. Ability to manage complex processes across multiple stakeholders
5. Excellent communication skills and team player
6. Motivation to build the best products for Apple's customers

Preferred Qualifications

1. 2+ years of experience in software engineering
2. Experience in building large scale ML systems is a plus
3. Distributed cloud computing experience (GCP, AWS) is a plus