Build & Deployment Engineer — AI-Driven Backend Systems

Apple, Inc.; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 142,000 - 214,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

Retirement benefits

Employee stock programs

Relocation assistance

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Apple Inc. in San Diego, CA seeks a Software Engineer for Build Support Engineering to modernize build, deployment, and hotfix systems used by hundreds of developers.

You will refactor legacy tooling, standardize containerized workflows, and introduce AI-driven automation to reduce toil while improving reliability. Join a collaborative team across PMs, partner platform teams, and SREs to design scalable backend services in Java and Python, deploying via Kubernetes, with emphasis on testing and

Qualifications

• 2+ years of industry experience building backend systems.
• Strong programming skills in Java and Python.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes for container orchestration and deployment.
• Familiarity with utilizing and developing AI-driven and agentic tools to improve workflows and productivity.
• Knowledge of algorithms, data structures, and distributed systems principles.
• Experience with databases (relational and/or NoSQL) and scalable service architectures.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset.
• BS, MS or PhD in Computer Science/Engineering

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize scalable backend services and APIs in Java and Python that power build, deployment, and hotfix workflows for engineering teams across Apple.
• Collaborate with project managers and partner teams to gather requirements and translate them into technical solutions that improve developer productivity.
• Modernize legacy build-and-deploy pipelines, consolidating multiple build artifact types onto a single standardized containerized image deployed identically across environments.
• Develop and maintain multi-repo developer tooling - build, hotfix, request, and auto-merge systems - that enable hundreds of developers to build, test, and deploy services efficiently.
• Integrate AI-driven and agentic tools into on-call triage, debugging, and developer support to automate workflows, surface intelligent insights, and reduce operational toil.
• Design and build agentic AI systems - tool-using, multi-step agents and skills that autonomously triage pages, investigate build and deployment failures, and assist developers and SREs.
• Build and maintain containerized services using Kubernetes for reliable deployment and orchestration.
• Evolve platform architectures for reliability, maintainability, and performance at scale, while adding unit and integration test coverage and addressing security vulnerabilities.
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code that upholds Apple's high standard of engineering excellence.
• Participate in code reviews, architectural discussions, and production troubleshooting, sharing knowledge and elevating quality across the team.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation to enable rapid, safe deployments and hotfixes.

Skills

Java

Python

Kubernetes

AI tools

Distributed systems

Databases

Communication

CS degree

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

Kubernetes

Job description

Apple Inc. in San Diego, CA seeks a Software Engineer for Build Support Engineering to modernize build, deployment, and hotfix systems used by hundreds of developers.

You will refactor legacy tooling, standardize containerized workflows, and introduce AI-driven automation to reduce toil while improving reliability. Join a collaborative team across PMs, partner platform teams, and SREs to design scalable backend services in Java and Python, deploying via Kubernetes, with emphasis on testing and