Senior Cloud Engineer (Wallet, Payments and Commerce)

Apple Inc.; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. is seeking a Senior Cloud Engineer in Cary, North Carolina, to spearhead cloud platform development in areas including payments and customer experience. The ideal candidate will possess at least 8 years of engineering expertise and be fluent in Kubernetes, Terraform, and cloud security practices. You will be crucial in architecting next-generation cloud solutions that enhance our services and secure our systems.

Your role will focus on driving cross-functional solutions, mentoring team members, and representing the team in key initiatives across Apple. A Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience is preferred.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of Cloud infrastructure and platform engineering experience.
• Experience building platforms that are customer-centric.
• Expertise in Kubernetes and Containers across multiple environments.
• Deep knowledge of Infrastructure as Code practices.
• Experience with security-first architectures and policy management.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and delivery of platform capabilities end-to-end.
• Drive technical direction on multi-quarter initiatives.
• Architect and evolve platform-as-a-product offerings.
• Lead design and rollout of security controls.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers.

Skills

Cloud infrastructure and platform engineering

Kubernetes and Containers

Infrastructure as Code with Crossplane and Terraform

Public cloud expertise (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Security-first architecture with Policy as Code

GitOps and CI/CD

Strong networking fundamentals

Linux internals and systems-level troubleshooting

Microservices and distributed systems experience

Experience with service meshes and observability stacks

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or equivalent work experience

Tools

Crossplane

Terraform

Flux

Jenkins

Istio

Prometheus

Job description

Senior Cloud Engineer (Wallet, Payments and Commerce)

Cary, North Carolina, United States Software and Services

Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming phenomenal products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Apple Pay is transforming the industry in payments, transit and identity, and we're aggressively focusing on the customer's digital wallet experience. Our scale and security demands create unique opportunities for innovative and creative solutions which contribute to millions of customer's daily interactions.

Description

The Wallet, Payments and Commerce (WPC) Cloud Engineering team is looking for an experienced Senior Cloud Engineer to take ownership of complex, ambiguous problems and drive cross-functional solutions that scale with our growth. In this role you'll independently lead significant pieces of our cloud platform, set technical direction on project teams, and raise the bar on quality, security, and customer focus across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and delivery of platform capabilities end-to-end — from gathering requirements with product and partner teams to running them in production.
• Drive technical direction on multi-quarter initiatives, framing trade-offs and aligning engineering, security, quality, and SRE partners around shared outcomes.
• Architect and evolve our platform-as-a-product offerings, treating internal developers as first-class customers and reducing the friction between idea and production.
• Lead the design and rollout of security-first patterns and policy-as-code controls (Kyverno, OPA) so the platform makes the secure path the easy path.
• Solve complex problems using a mix of open-source and in-house tooling, balancing pragmatism with the long-term health of the platform.
• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers through code review, design partnership, and targeted coaching on complex assignments.
• Scale existing technologies and introduce new ones to outpace growth projections, and shepherd them from experiment to production-grade adoption.
• Represent the team in cross-organization initiatives, partnering with adjacent platform, security and developer teams to keep our technical strategy cohesive.
• Evangelize next-generation cloud and DevOps practices, building the credibility and shared understanding needed to bring them to fruition across WPC.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of Cloud infrastructure and platform engineering experience, with a track record of owning systems end-to-end in production.
• Experience building platforms and platform-as-a-product... You think about internal developers as customers, and you've shipped paved roads that people actually want to use.
• Kubernetes and Containers... Been there, done that, and now you're the person others come to when the cluster is on fire. You've owned multi-tenant, multi-cluster, multi-region footprints end-to-end.
• Infrastructure as Code, with deep Crossplane and Terraform experience... You've designed composition and provider patterns at scale, not just consumed them. The console is for read-only.
• Security-first architecture with Policy as Code (Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper)... You bake guardrails into the platform so the secure path is the easy path, and you can defend your trade-offs to security partners.
• Public cloud expertise across AWS, GCP, and/or Azure... You know which services to use, when to use them, and — just as importantly — when not to.
• GitOps and CI/CD with Flux, Jenkins, Kargo... Everything ships through pipelines, promotion is declarative, and rollback is a non-event.
• Strong networking fundamentals (NATs, TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, mTLS)... You can debug a cross-region connectivity issue without flinching.
• Linux internals and systems-level troubleshooting... When the symptom is 'it's slow sometimes', you know how to find the actual cause.
• Microservices and distributed systems experience... You've designed for failure, not just success.
• Experience with service meshes (Istio, Traefik, LinkerD) and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Sensu).
• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, drive technical direction across a project team, and align solutions with business objectives in ambiguous, cross-functional environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, a related field, or 10 years of equivalent work experience is highly desirable.

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.