Quality Engineer, Retail Demo Experiences

Socket.dev; Sunnyvale (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is seeking a Sr. Quality Engineer for Retail Technology QA to own strategy and execution across a portfolio of applications and systems.

You will design and drive automated test coverage while maintaining a balance of exploratory testing, partnering with engineers to improve testability early in design. The role requires 7+ years in quality engineering, strong Python/Swift skills, proficiency with XCUITest, Playwright, API testing, and CI/CD tooling.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in software quality engineering or test automation.
• Leadership in defining quality strategy across native clients and backend pipelines.
• Experience testing iOS/macOS apps on managed Apple devices with XCUITest.
• Proficient in Swift and Python for automation and debugging.
• Experience with API testing, Playwright, and data-driven validation.
• Proven ability to diagnose failures across network, client, and service layers.

Responsibilities

• Own strategy and execution across a portfolio of Apple Store applications and systems.
• Design and drive automated test coverage across this portfolio.
• Influence testability and observability early in product design.
• Lead QA activities and mentor QA engineers.

Skills

Quality engineering

Test automation

XCUITest/XCTest

Swift

Python

Playwright

CI/CD

Jenkins

GitHub

Distributed systems

Education

BS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Jenkins

GitHub

Docker/Kubernetes

Ansible

Rundeck

Job description

Imagine what you could do here! The people here at Apple don’t just create products — they build the kind of wonder that’s revolutionized entire industries. It’s the diversity of those people and their ideas that inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do, from amazing technology to industry‑leading environmental efforts. At Apple, inclusion is a shared responsibility, and we work together to foster a culture where everyone belongs and is inspired to do their best work. We’re a diverse collective of thinkers and doers, continuously reimagining our products and practices to help people do what they love in new ways. That innovation is inspired by a shared commitment to great work — and to each other. Because learning from the people here means we’re learning from the best. Retail Operations creates the tools and programs that empower our teams to provide, a one of a kind, only at Apple experience. We do this by obsessing over the employee and customer experience, and driving a global strategy that sets the bar. The Retail Technology, QA Engineering team owns quality standards, strategy and execution for customer facing interactive apps and systems. Our stack spans AV hardware, interactive players, device targeting logic, demo apps, content management systems, content bundles, SDKs and experience frameworks. We compose all of this into innovative, scaleable customer demo experiences worldwide.

Description

We are seeking a Sr. Quality Engineer to own strategy and execution across a portfolio of applications and systems deployed to Apple Stores worldwide. You will design and drive automated test coverage across this portfolio while maintaining a healthy balance of exploratory testing. In partnership with engineers, you will influencing testability and observability early in the design process to build in quality from the start.

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years in software quality engineering, test automation, or software development.
• Demonstrated technical leadership defining quality strategy across a full product surface spanning multiple native clients, backend services and delivery pipelines.
• Track record partnering with engineers to influence architecture, quality practices (feature flag programs, test hooks, staging fidelity) across partner organizations and mentoring QA engineers.
• Proven experience testing native iOS and macOS applications end to end on managed Apple devices (XCUITest/XCTest authoring, app lifecycle and state restoration, log analysis and triage).
• Quality ownership for a multi-platform client family, including app version compatibility matrix and the content or services they depend on.
• Proficient in Swift and Python with the ability to build and maintain automation, debug and extend client apps and backend services under test.
• Proven experience testing web applications and backend services end to end, including API and contract testing, browser automation (e.g. Playwright), and data‑driven validation across a CMS and its clients.
• Experience testing asynchronous, distributed workflows — job orchestration, retries and idempotency, partial failure, and eventual consistency (e.g. Temporal, Airflow, or equivalent).
• Skilled in root‑causing failures across multiple system boundaries, spanning netowrking, client, service, content layers etc.
• Comfortable working in a trunk‑based / mainline development environment, driving confidence through CI coverage, feature flags, and staged rollout rather than a release‑candidate handoff.
• Serve as the go/no‑go decision maker for user‑acceptance, production‑validation testing and customer‑facing releases.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and version control (Jenkins, GitHub, Docker/Kubernetes, Ansible, Rundeck), including running automated client and service suites as a merge gate.
• BS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Client performance profiling with instruments — memory footprint, launch time, and rendering behavior on long‑running unattended devices.
• Experience testing client behavior under degraded or offline network conditions, including content caching and recovery.
• Working knowledge of observability tooling (e.g. Splunk, Datadog) — able to define what a feature should log, not only consume existing dashboards.
• Test data and environment management — mirroring production data into lower environments, seeding realistic content, and reasoning about staging fidelity.
• Accessibility and multi‑locale validation for customer‑facing applications.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.
• Able to report quality and release‑readiness status clearly to cross‑functional and leadership stakeholders.