Research Engineer: Foundation Models Pretraining Data

Apple, Inc.; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 278,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonuses or commission (discretionary)

Relocation assistance

Employee stock programs

Educational expense reimbursement

Medical and dental coverage

Job summary

Apple is seeking a Machine Learning Research Engineer for Pretraining Data on Foundation Models in Cupertino, CA. You will advance data curation, quality assessment, and scalable data systems that support massive token processing for state-of-the-art model training.

The role blends research and production, collaborating with model training teams to translate ideas into robust, scalable data pipelines and experiments, helping to push capabilities in knowledge, reasoning, coding, and multilingual

Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related technical field, or 5+ years of equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills in Python and proficiency in developing production-quality software.
• Experience with large-scale data processing, distributed computing, or machine learning systems.
• Solid understanding of machine learning fundamentals and modern deep learning architectures.
• Hands-on experience with PyTorch, model training, and experimental evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Research, design, and implement novel algorithms for large-scale pretraining data curation, including quality filtering, deduplication, data selection, and mixture optimization.
• Build and optimize scalable data processing systems capable of handling trillions of tokens across diverse data sources.
• Develop machine learning-based approaches for data quality assessment, synthetic data generation, and data efficiency optimization.
• Collaborate with foundation model researchers to design and execute training experiments, analyze model performance, and identify opportunities for improving model capabilities.
• Investigate the relationship between training data characteristics, model scaling, training dynamics, and downstream evaluation results.
• Translate research prototypes into efficient, reliable, and production-ready data systems.
• Stay current with advances in foundation model research and apply emerging techniques to practical data challenges.

Skills

Python programming

Production‑quality software

Large‑scale data processing

Machine learning systems

Analytical problem solving

Education

BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science or ML, or 5+ years of equivalent experience

Strong foundations in ML

Tools

Spark

Ray

PyTorch

Distributed computing frameworks

Job description

Apple is seeking a Machine Learning Research Engineer for Pretraining Data on Foundation Models in Cupertino, CA. You will advance data curation, quality assessment, and scalable data systems that support massive token processing for state-of-the-art model training.

The role blends research and production, collaborating with model training teams to translate ideas into robust, scalable data pipelines and experiments, helping to push capabilities in knowledge, reasoning, coding, and multilingual