Senior Engineering Program Manager, ASE Central Quality – Private Cloud Compute

Apple Inc.; Cupertino, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 145,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonuses

Relocation assistance

Employee stock programs

Medical and dental coverage

Job summary

Apple Inc. seeks a Senior Engineering Program Manager for ASE Central Quality focusing on Private Cloud Compute.

You’ll drive quality across PCC software, ML inference, and Apple Silicon datacenter validation, coordinating with Engineering, SRE, and ML teams to ensure production readiness and high reliability. You’ll own test strategy, staged rollouts, and incident retrospectives, translating complex technical issues into clear updates for stakeholders and leadership as Apple pushes scalable,

Qualifications

• 6+ years leading complex cross-functional software programs.
• Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills.
• Strong stakeholder leadership and influence without authority.
• Analytical and structured problem-solving to tackle ambiguous issues.
• Ability to translate technical constraints into business impact.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end Quality Engineering program lifecycle for PCC, coordinating cross-functional teams.
• Serve as the primary QA expert for PCC initiatives.
• Define comprehensive E2E test coverage across software, models, and infrastructure.
• Manage QA sign-off for PCC releases, including model and software rollouts.
• Provide clear status reporting to engineers and senior leadership.
• Develop quality standards, testing protocols, and documentation for PCC.
• Identify risks and dependencies, escalate blockers, and support incident retrospectives.
• Define and drive functional test strategy for PCC components like routing, attestation, and inference serving.

Skills

Program management

Communication

Cross-functional leadership

Problem solving

Stakeholder management

Education

B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

Cloud/datacenter tooling

Job description

Senior Engineering Program Manager, ASE Central Quality – Private Cloud Compute

Cupertino, California, United States Software and Services

The people here at Apple don't just create products — they create the kind of wonder that's revolutionized entire industries. It's the diversity of those people and their ideas that inspires the innovation running through everything we do. Do you believe generative AI has the power to change how we live, work, and interact — and that privacy and security must never be sacrificed in that pursuit? Do you thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments and enjoy working across complex, high-stakes technical systems?The Central Quality Engineering Program Manager for Private Cloud Compute (PCC) drives the quality backbone of one of Apple's most technically ambitious infrastructure efforts — the systems powering Apple Intelligence. This role sits at the intersection of software engineering, Quality, SRE, and ML/inference release engineering, driving the test strategy, QA sign-off process, and readiness required to ship PCC with the quality and trust Apple's customers expect. You'll move fluidly between deep technical detail — build pipelines, staged rollouts, distributed systems — and executive-level communication, building relationships across an organization where the teams you depend on are spread throughout the company.

Description

In this role, you'll work closely with Engineering, Quality, SRE and ML build/release teams to define and continuously improve how PCC software and infrastructure are validated before they reach production. This includes the build and staged-rollout pipeline for large language models running on PCC, model weight updates across OS and PCC release trains, and the datacenter/Apple Silicon platform validation that underpins the service. You will drive cross-functional programs across teams of highly skilled engineers and program managers — providing direction, fostering collaboration, and holding the bar for quality outcomes.You must be comfortable operating independently in new and unfamiliar domains — quickly building competence in evolving frameworks as well as PCC's own privacy and security architecture, to inform your work. Success requires breaking large, ambiguous problems into manageable pieces, leveraging subject-matter experts across Foundation Models, AIML, evals, and SRE, and adapting your plan as understanding evolves. Strong communication is essential to your credibility: you must synthesize complex technical issues into clear points, tailor communication to different levels of seniority, write clearly, deliver effective presentations, and run large, high-stakes meetings — including incident postmortems when releases don't go as planned.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end Quality Engineering program lifecycle for Private Cloud Compute — facilitating cross-functional coordination and breaking down complex program goals (PCC software releases, LLM/model rollouts, Apple Silicon datacenter integration) into manageable milestones.
• Act as the primary point of contact and strategic subject-matter expert for "all things QA" on assigned PCC initiatives.
• Partner with engineering, SRE, and ML build/release teams to identify critical use cases and define comprehensive End-to-End (E2E) test coverage across the PCC software, model release, and infrastructure stack.
• Own and manage the QA sign-off process end-to-end for PCC releases — including staged rollouts of models and software across OS and PCC release trains — driving critical go/no-go decisions and ensuring production readiness.
• Drive continuous status tracking and deliver clear, audience-tailored reporting to stakeholders at all levels, from individual engineers to senior leadership.
• Support and guide the creation of quality standards, testing protocols, and documentation specific to PCC.
• Establish and track known risks and dependencies across hardware, software, and cross-org partners, escalating and resolving blockers proactively — including leading or supporting incident response and retrospectives for release issues.
• Define and drive functional test strategy across core PCC components — including request routing, node attestation, inference serving, and API/service surfaces — ensuring functional correctness before code and model changes progress to staging and production.

Minimum Qualifications

• 6+ years of experience as a Program Manager / Technical Program Manager / QA Lead / SW Architect / SW Engineer, with a track record of leading complex, cross-functional software programs
• Outstanding written and verbal communication and presentation skills, adaptable to all levels of an organization
• Excellent stakeholder leadership skills, with demonstrated ability to influence and collaborate across functions without direct authority
• Strong analytical and structured problem-solving skills — able to deconstruct ambiguous, complex problems, resolve conflicts, and lead teams to solutions
• Ability to understand technical systems and translate technical constraints into business impact and vice versa
• Demonstrated ability to build strong, trust-based relationships across a large, distributed organization
• Self-starting, self-motivated, self-directed, and comfortable operating with minimal oversight in ambiguous environments
• B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience
• Experience partnering with SRE, infrastructure, or cloud/datacenter engineering teams on large-scale distributed systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience validating ML or LLM workloads running on hardware accelerators (GPUs, NPUs, or Apple Silicon) in a cloud or datacenter environment
• Familiarity with build/release pipelines for large-scale systems, including model weight management and staged rollouts across release trains
• Experience with large-scale cloud infrastructure programs, including familiarity with Kubernetes or comparable orchestration platforms
• Experience owning or supporting incident response and retrospectives for production release issues
• A track record of managing company-wide, cross-functional programs for privacy-critical or security-critical cloud and AI infrastructure at scale, comparable in complexity to Private Cloud Compute
• Experience at the hardware-software boundary in a private cloud, hyperscale datacenter, or edge compute environment

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 $144,600 and $263,800, 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

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Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.