Principal Data Engineering Lead - Services Special Project

Apple Inc.; Cupertino, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 263,000 - 394,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. is seeking a Principal Data Engineering Lead for Services Special Project in Cupertino. You will lead design, build and operations of a real-time data platform, coordinating with ML teams, data scientists, and platform teams to deliver scalable pipelines and governance across Apple.

The role emphasizes ETL/ELT, data modeling, and deployment of ML-enabled data pipelines, with a strong focus on reliability, privacy, and performance at scale.

Qualifications

• Masters degree in a data-related field or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of data engineering with large-scale ETL/ELT pipelines.
• Strong data modeling skills, especially dimensional modeling for analytics.
• Experience with SQL/NoSQL databases (Postgres, Cassandra, Redis).
• Proficiency with Spark and distributed processing frameworks.
• Experience with Kafka, Iceberg, Flink, and Airflow/Beam.
• Way with AWS data services and data lake architectures.
• Experience deploying ML/LLM pipelines and model inference in production.
• Excellent communication and collaboration with senior stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead batch and streaming ETL/ELT pipelines ingesting diverse data sources.
• Develop Kafka-based ingestion and processing pipelines to data lake.
• Create robust data models optimized for analytics and operations.
• Define data quality checks, SLAs, and observability standards.
• Enrich raw signals with metadata for analytics, billing, and planning.
• Enforce data lineage, schema governance, and data security practices.
• Deliver monitoring, logging, anomaly detection, and data validation.
• Collaborate with ML engineers, data scientists, and platform teams.
• Advance data stack tooling, frameworks, and development standards.
• Coordinate with Apple teams on larger-scale data initiatives.

Skills

ETL/ELT

Data modeling

Scala

Java

Python

Apache Spark

Kafka

Kubernetes

Airflow

Beam

BigQuery

Redshift

PySpark

Postgres

Cassandra

Redis

SQL/NoSQL

Apache Spark SQL

Docker

Kubernetes/EKS

Jenkins

AWS services

S3

EMR

Glue

TensorRT/ONNX Runtime

Triton

PyTorch/TensorFlow

Graph databases

TigerGraph

Education

Masters Degree

Tools

Apache Kafka

Iceberg

Flink

Apache Airflow

Beam

Docker

Kubernetes

Jenkins

AWS (S3, EMR, Glue, Redshift)

BigQuery

Spark

Python

PySpark

Parquet/ORC

Postgres

Cassandra

Redis

Docker

Kubernetes/EKS

Jenkins

Triton/TorchServe

ONNX Runtime

TensorRT

GA4GH Data Governance

Job description

Principal Data Engineering Lead - Services Special Project

Cupertino, California, United States Software and Services

At Apple, great ideas have a way of becoming phenomenal products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Our team is building a massive, real-time platform that transforms continuous streams of multimodal data (including structured, image, and log data) into an intelligent, searchable foundation.We are seeking a Principal Data Engineer to lead and drive not only our team's data processing systems, but also to partner at a larger scale, coordinating and synching strategically with other business groups and organizations within Apple.

Description

We are seeking a Principal Data Engineering Lead with deep expertise in ETL/ELT, data architecture, and applied ML pipelines to drive the design, build, and operations of this infrastructure. As a key member of our team, you will be responsible for driving critical decisions and operations across the entire system while aligning strategically across Apple.

Responsibilities

• Build and implement batch and streaming ETL/ELT pipelines that ingest, process, and model data from diverse sources, including unstructured media and real-time event streams, ensuring high reliability, performance, and scalability.
• Develop and maintain Kafka-based ingestion and processing pipelines, ensuring reliable data delivery across services and into the data lake.
• Build robust logical and physical data models with a focus on dimensional modeling, versioning, and storage patterns (e.g., Parquet, ORC) optimized for ingest, reporting, and operational use cases.
• Define and enforce data quality checks, SLAs, and observability standards to ensure data is accurate, timely, versioned, and trusted by stakeholders.
• Integrate and enrich raw signals with metadata and attribution to power downstream use cases such as analytics, billing, planning, and optimization.
• Implement standard methodologies for data lineage, metadata management, schema governance, versioning, and security in alignment with Apple's standards for data protection and privacy.
• Deliver solutions that include logging, anomaly detection, data validation, cleaning, and transformation, with strong emphasis on monitoring, debuggability, and continuous improvement.
• Work closely with ML engineers, data scientists, platform teams, and leadership to translate requirements into scalable, reliable data solutions.
• Help advance the team's data stack, including tooling, frameworks, and standards for development, testing, deployment, and operations.
• Align our team with other Apple teams strategically, participating in larger scale discussions and deliverables across our ecosystem.

Minimum Qualifications

• Masters Degree
• 12+ years of experience in data engineering, including building and maintaining large-scale ETL/ELT data pipelines
• Proficiency in data modeling, especially dimensional modeling, and designing schemas optimized for analytics and reporting
• Experience with leveraging databases including SQL/NoSQL Databases (including Postgres / Cassandra / Redis)
• Strong experience with distributed data processing frameworks including Apache Spark
• Strong experience with Parallel processing frameworks: BigTable/Hadoop
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and proven experience with Scala, Java
• Hands-on experience with Apache Kafka, Iceberg, and Flink.
• Experience with workflow orchestration tools including Apache Airflow and Beam
• Experience with AWS: e.g., S3, EMR, Lambda, Glue, Redshift, BigQuery, Kinesis, or similar services
• Experience with Analytics frameworks including Trino (Presto, BigQuery, Snowflake)
• Hands-on experience with big data lake architectures
• Experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/EKS) and CI/CD tooling including Jenkins
• Experience in Python and PySpark
• Familiarity with graph databases such as TigerGraph
• Experience building pipelines that process multimodal data (structured and image) and integrate ML model inference - including LLMs and embedding models - for data enrichment and transformation
• Hands-on experience deploying, serving, and optimizing LLMs or ML models directly in the production, inference runtimes/compilers (ONNX Runtime, TensorRT/TensorRT-LLM), and serving frameworks (Triton, vLLM, TorchServe or similar).
• Experience tuning batching, KV-cache, and GPU utilization for low-latency, high-throughput real-time inference in a data pipeline
• Knowledge of data governance principles, data security best practices, and data privacy regulations
• Proven experience delivering a consumer-oriented solution by participating at every stage of the development life-cycle.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative mindset with past experience presenting and partnering with VP and C level decision makers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with data versioning tools and frameworks (e.g., DVC, Delta Lake)
• Experience storing/serving embeddings (e.g., pgvector, Milvus, FAISS)

At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $262,500 and $394,000, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple’s discretionary employee stock programs. Apple employees are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards, and can purchase Apple stock at a discount if voluntarily participating in Apple’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You’ll also receive benefits including: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and for formal education related to advancing your career at Apple, reimbursement for certain educational expenses — including tuition. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary bonuses or commission payments as well as relocation. Learn more about Apple Benefits

Note: Apple benefit, compensation and employee stock programs are subject to eligibility requirements and other terms of the applicable plan or program.

Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant

At Apple, we believe accessibility is a fundamental human right. You’ll find that idea reflected in everything here — in our culture, our benefits and our digital tools. By welcoming as many perspectives as possible, we help you build a career where you feel like you belong.
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Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.