Lead AI Search & Retrieval Engineering

Apple Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 238,000 - 402,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

Employee stock programs

Relocation assistance

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Apple Inc. is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for AI Search & Retrieval. You will own architecture for large-scale, low-latency search, guide retrieval and ranking across real-time, vector-based and hybrid methods, and lead a team of engineers who deliver the roadmap.

This hands-on leadership role blends technical vision with people leadership. You will drive evaluation, stay current with IR research, protect user privacy, and set guardrails for safe generative search results, collaborating

Qualifications

• We hold an MS in CS or equivalent; PhD is preferred.
• Note: this role requires 12+ years in ML, data science, or software with leadership.
• Requires leadership experience including hiring and mentoring senior engineers.
• Experience architecting large-scale search systems from design to production.
• Deep understanding of information retrieval, ranking algorithms, and user modeling.
• Experience with offline evaluation and online A/B testing for search relevance.
• Familiarity with vector databases and modern search stacks.
• Cloud, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), and streaming platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for large-scale, low-latency search infrastructure.
• Lead query understanding and retrieval strategy across pipelines and hybrid retrieval.
• Drive ranking strategy and AI/ML-driven search quality improvements.
• Own evaluation frameworks and A/B testing methodologies.
• Stay current with IR research and translate it to scalable designs.
• Ensure privacy as an architectural constraint in ranking and retrieval.
• Lead safety guardrails for generative AI outputs and red-teaming.
• Develop and ship AI-powered search features while improving developer productivity.
• Raise the technical bar through design reviews and coding standards.
• Represent the team in cross-functional design reviews with R&D, Product, Data Eng, MLOps, and Search Infra.
• Unblock high-risk technical problems and drive production delivery.
• Attract, hire, and mentor senior/staff engineers.
• Allocate work to roadmap with strong engineering discipline.
• Advocate for platform investments and communicate progress to leadership.
• Foster a culture of ownership, rigorous reviews, and user trust.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural design

Communication

Team mentoring

Systems programming (Go)

Java

Python

ML frameworks (TensorFlow/PyTorch)

Data processing pipelines (Spark/Flink

Education

MS in Computer Science

PhD preferred

Tools

Go

C++

Java

Python

Spark

Flink

OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Milvus/Qdrant/Pinecone/FAISS

Job description

Apple Inc. is seeking a Senior Engineering Manager for AI Search & Retrieval. You will own architecture for large-scale, low-latency search, guide retrieval and ranking across real-time, vector-based and hybrid methods, and lead a team of engineers who deliver the roadmap.

This hands-on leadership role blends technical vision with people leadership. You will drive evaluation, stay current with IR research, protect user privacy, and set guardrails for safe generative search results, collaborating