Cloud Data Center Hardware Architect - CPU & Performance

Apple Inc.; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. is seeking a Server Hardware Engineer with deep expertise in CPU architectures, compute performance analysis, and cloud-scale hardware optimization.

In this role you will evaluate next‑generation server platforms, assess workload requirements, and guide processor selection across x86, ARM, and accelerator‑enabled systems. You will partner with SRE, platform engineering, and capacity planning to ensure Apple’s Compute cloud runs on efficient compute platforms, and you will build

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field.
• 5+ years in server hardware engineering, CPU architecture evaluation, or performance engineering.
• Solid understanding of microarchitecture concepts: Pipelines, branch prediction, out-of-order execution.
• Experience evaluating Intel Xeon, AMD EPYC and ARM CPUs.
• Hands-on with Kubernetes, cloud workloads, virtualization (KVM), and container infra.
• Proficiency with benchmarking tools (SPEC, fio, sysbench, perf, pmu-tools) and workload profiling.
• Familiarity with telemetry and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, eBPF).

Responsibilities

• CPU Architecture & Performance Engineering: evaluate CPU architectures for cloud/workloads; benchmark and model performance and cost efficiency.
• Server Hardware & Platform Analysis: assess memory, PCIe, NICs, accelerator integration; optimize for Kubernetes and bare-metal.
• Cloud & Kubernetes Workload Profiling: analyze workload patterns, guide cluster sizing and autoscaling; build dashboards.
• Procurement & Cost Optimization: lead CPU/server platform recommendations; model TCO and cost-efficiency.

Skills

CPU architecture evaluation

Performance engineering

Cloud workloads

Kubernetes experience

Telemetry & observability

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Electrical Engineering/CS

Tools

SPEC

fio

sysbench

perf

pmu-tools

Prometheus

Grafana

eBPF

Job description

Apple Inc. is seeking a Server Hardware Engineer with deep expertise in CPU architectures, compute performance analysis, and cloud-scale hardware optimization.

In this role you will evaluate next‑generation server platforms, assess workload requirements, and guide processor selection across x86, ARM, and accelerator‑enabled systems. You will partner with SRE, platform engineering, and capacity planning to ensure Apple’s Compute cloud runs on efficient compute platforms, and you will build