Senior Infrastructure Engineer, Family Services

Socket.dev; San Diego (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is seeking an infrastructure engineer for the Family Services team to design and build scalable infrastructure powering family features across iOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS and tvOS.

You will guide architectural decisions, craft reusable frameworks, and collaborate with multiple teams to ensure long-term reliability and performance at scale for hundreds of millions of users.

Qualifications

• Computer Science degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong programming skills with object-oriented design expertise and track record of building production software.
• Demonstrated technical leadership with ability to influence technical direction and drive improvements.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals and experience crafting scalable service architectures.
• Systems thinking ability: can architect solutions that balance long-term vision with practical constraints.

Responsibilities

• Design and build infrastructure powering Apple's family features across iOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS and tvOS.
• Provide technical leadership and architectural direction for infrastructure that scales to hundreds of millions of users.
• Collaborate across client framework teams and service teams to deliver reusable, forward-looking frameworks.
• Architect systems handling complex lifecycle scenarios (invitations, member changes, entitlements) with rigor and correctness.

Skills

Object-oriented design

Production software development

Technical leadership

Distributed systems fundamentals

Systems thinking

Education

Computer Science degree or equivalent practical experience

Job description

What if you could architect the infrastructure that coordinates family experiences across every major Apple service—from App Store to iCloud to Screen Time? The Family Services team does exactly that, building the foundational frameworks that handle complex state management, entitlement propagation, and lifecycle transitions for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. The best infrastructure engineers understand that phenomenal platforms enable great products. You will need to balance technical elegance with product impact, designing systems that are both architecturally sound and unlock new family experiences for users. Are you passionate about crafting elegant, reusable infrastructure that solves complex problems at their core? Do you thrive on diving deep into technical challenges, building frameworks that stand the test of time, and creating abstractions that unlock new possibilities? If so, we want you to join our team.

Description

As an engineer on the Family Services team, you will be a technical leader responsible for designing and building the infrastructure that powers Apple's family features across iOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, and tvOS. This is not just about implementing features—it's about creating the robust, forward-looking frameworks and systems that enable our team and partner teams to build family experiences for years to come. You will dive deep into complex technical problems, designing generic, reusable solutions that work across multiple use cases. You will architect systems that handle intricate family lifecycle scenarios (invitations, member changes, minors transitioning to adults, entitlement propagation) with elegance and correctness. You will be responsible for the technical direction of our infrastructure, making critical architectural decisions that affect how many teams across Apple build family features. This role requires someone who can go from high-level system design to hands-on implementation, who insists on getting the details right, and who thinks in terms of frameworks and abstractions rather than one-off solutions. You will work across organizational boundaries—collaborating with client framework teams and numerous service teams—but your primary focus will be on the deep technical work of building infrastructure that lasts. The work is sophisticated and challenging, requiring both systems thinking and empathy for the user experience. Your technical leadership will define how Apple builds its family ecosystem at scale, and the infrastructure you create will become an integral part of how hundreds of millions of users experience our products for years to come. The opportunities for impact are boundless.

Minimum Qualifications

Computer Science degree or equivalent practical experienceStrong programming skills with object-oriented design expertise and track record of building production software Demonstrated technical leadership with ability to influence technical direction and drive improvements Solid understanding of distributed systems fundamentals and experience crafting scalable service architectures Systems thinking ability: can architect solutions that balance long-term vision with practical constraints

Preferred Qualifications

Expert-level understanding of distributed systems: consistency models, concurrency, fault tolerance, and large-scale system design Consistent record of building services adopted by multiple teams across organizational boundaries Experience building and operating mission-critical infrastructure at scale with focus on reliability and performance monitoring History of leading technical direction across organizational boundaries while maintaining hands-on implementation excellence