Lead Systems Architect, Scalable Payments Platform

Apple Inc.; Cupertino, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 216,000 - 325,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental coverage

Stock programs

Relocation assistance

Job summary

Apple Inc. in Cupertino, CA is seeking a Software Engineering Technical Lead for Apple Pay within Wallet, Payments & Commerce (WPC).

You will guide the design and implementation of distributed systems at scale, mentor engineers, and own end-to-end delivery from architecture through production operations. You will lead architecture discussions, write specifications, and collaborate with global teams to influence technical direction.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience architecting, building, and maintaining distributed systems at large scale.
• Strong understanding of consistency, latency, and throughput trade-offs.
• A commitment to engineering excellence and continuous improvement.
• Ability to communicate clearly to drive consensus on complex technical concepts.
• Track record of technical influence within teams and with external partners.
• Tenacity to lead complex projects from conception to production.
• No formal degree is required; applicable skills matter most.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and maintain mission-critical distributed systems at large scale.
• Drive engineering strategy across teams and disciplines.
• Write specifications and documentation to drive consensus on complex concepts.
• Mentor peers and review code to uphold engineering excellence.
• Design and operate high-volume REST and/or gRPC services for server-to-server and mobile use cases.
• Provide on-call support and contribute to monitoring and observability strategies.
• Collaborate with global teams and external partners to influence technical direction.
• Lead complex projects end-to-end from conception through production deployment.

Skills

Distributed systems

Architecting

Communication

Mentoring

On-call

Team collaboration

Tools

Java

Kotlin

Spring

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

OpenTelemetry

Grafana

Job description

Apple Inc. in Cupertino, CA is seeking a Software Engineering Technical Lead for Apple Pay within Wallet, Payments & Commerce (WPC).

You will guide the design and implementation of distributed systems at scale, mentor engineers, and own end-to-end delivery from architecture through production operations. You will lead architecture discussions, write specifications, and collaborate with global teams to influence technical direction.