AIML - Machine Learning Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is seeking a world-class deep learning researcher to work on foundation models and their deployment on Apple silicon. You will collaborate with engineers and scientists across the training lifecycle, from pre-training to fine-tuning, focusing on private, embedded experiences.

The role emphasizes rigorous publication, strong Python tooling (JAX/PyTorch/TensorFlow), and PhD-level or equivalent experience.

Qualifications

• Deep learning expertise with a publication record.
• Proficient in Python and a DL toolkit (JAX, PyTorch or TensorFlow).
• PhD or equivalent practical experience in CS or related field.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with engineers and scientists on foundation models and DL research.
• Develop data pipelines and evaluation suites for vision-language understanding and generation.

Skills

Deep learning

Python

PyTorch

TensorFlow

JAX

Education

PhD or equivalent

Job description

Summary

We build frontier foundation models that power intelligent experiences at Apple. Our team works across the full training lifecycle: including pre-training foundation models, and developing mid-training approaches that bridge general capability and task-specific performance. What makes our work distinct is that we're engineering models specifically for Apple silicon and optimized for experiences that are private, personal, and deeply integrated into the OS. We're solving frontier problems in reward modeling to resist reward hacking, handling sparse and delayed rewards in agentic settings, and aligning models reliably across the spectrum from open-ended creative tasks to precise, action-taking workflows. If you're drawn to hard problems where the research and the product are inseparable, this is the team

Description

We believe that the most interesting problems in deep learning research arise when we try to apply learning to real-world use cases, and this is also where the most important breakthroughs come from. You will work with a close-knit and fast growing team of world-class engineers and scientists to tackle some of the most challenging problems in foundation models and deep learning, including vision-language modeling, image and video generation, and Building data pipelines and evaluation suites for visual understanding and generation at scale.

Minimum Qualifications

Demonstrated expertise in deep learning with a publication record in relevant conferences (e.g., CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, COLM, ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, KDD, ACL) or a track record in applying deep learning techniques to productsProficient programming skills in Python and one of the deep learning toolkits such as JAX, PyTorch, or TensorflowAbility to work in a collaborative environment.PhD, or equivalent practical experience, in Computer Science, or related technical field.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience training or adapting vision-language modelsExperience with image/video generation or editingPost-training, mid-training large language models or multimodal models.Reinforcement learning, on-policy distillation.Further, you will have opportunities to identify and develop novel applications of deep learning in Apple products. You will see your ideas not only published in papers, but also improve the experience of billions of users.