Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Apple Cloud AI

Apple Inc.; Seattle, Northern (WA, KY); Hybrid; USD 142,000 - 263,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. in Seattle, WA is seeking an ML engineer to design and operate large-scale ML platform services spanning embedding, retrieval, feature stores, and model deployment.

You will own end-to-end ML workflows, optimize costs and performance, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver production-ready ML solutions while on-call for production systems.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience building production ML systems or ML infrastructure.
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or Rust/Java.
• Understanding of end-to-end machine learning workflows—from data prep through training, eval, and deployment.
• Experience with distributed systems and large-scale data processing.
• Experience with model serving, inference optimization, or ML pipeline engineering.
• Experience building APIs and services that other engineers consume.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills.
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and optimize large-scale ML platform services used by teams across Apple.
• Build the embedding and retrieval path end to end—fine-tuning encoder models and vector indexes.
• Develop and operate feature stores for training and serving.
• Reduce cost and improve quality across ML workloads (routing, caching, configuration).
• Create self-service experiences to production AI with minimal friction.
• Build managed training (supervised fine-tuning, RL, distillation).
• Implement governance, lineage, and access control for ML workloads.
• Collaborate with customer teams to deliver production ML solutions.
• Operate production services with on-call responsibilities.

Skills

ML systems

Python

Rust/Java

Distributed systems

Model serving

APIs

Collaboration

Ambiguity

CS degree

Education

BS/MS/PhD in CS

Tools

TensorRT

Ray Serve

Kubernetes

Spark

Redis

Job description

Seattle, Washington, United States Software and Services

Apple is a place where extraordinary people gather to do their best work. Together we build products and experiences people love. The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) organization builds and operates the systems and infrastructure that power Apple's services at scale.The Apple AI platform within ASE enables teams across Apple to build, train, optimize, and deploy AI systems at scale. Our team builds the optimization and intelligence layer for frontier AI, making frontier class of models work better, cheaper, and faster through managed, serverless capabilities that span the full AI lifecycle: data and feature engineering, embeddings and retrieval, model training and fine-tuning, inference optimization and routing, prompt optimization, evaluation, and governance.

Description

We are looking for an ML engineer who is excited about building managed platform services at the intersection of ML, distributed systems, and production engineering.

Responsibilities

• As a member of the team, your responsibilities will include:
• Design, build, and optimize large-scale ML platform services used by teams across Apple
• Build the embedding and retrieval path end to end - fine-tuning encoder models, encoding corpora at scale, building and serving vector indexes, and evaluating retrieval quality so improvements are measurable rather than asserted
• Build and operate the feature store teams use for training and serving, keeping both paths consistent off a single feature definition
• Develop optimization capabilities that reduce cost and improve quality across ML workloads - including model routing, caching, serving configuration, inference optimization, and training efficiency
• Build managed, self-service experiences so customers can go from data to production AI with minimal friction
• Build managed training - supervised fine-tuning, reinforcement learning and distillation - so teams can customize models without running their own training infrastructure
• Build governance and compliance capabilities - lineage, policy enforcement, cost observability, and access control
• Partner with customer teams across Apple to understand their ML workloads and deliver production solutions
• Operate production services with on-call responsibilities

Minimum Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience building production ML systems or ML infrastructure
• Strong programming skills in Python and/or Rust/Java
• Understanding of end-to-end machine learning workflows - from data preparation through training, evaluation, and deployment
• Experience with distributed systems and large-scale data processing
• Experience with model serving, inference optimization, or ML pipeline engineering
• Experience building APIs and services that other engineers consume
• Strong collaboration and communication skills
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity in fast-moving areas
• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with LLM inference optimization (batching, quantization, KV caching, tensor parallelism)
• Experience with model serving frameworks (vLLM, TensorRT, Ray Serve, or similar)
• Experience with embedding models and retrieval systems - fine-tuning encoders on graded or contrastive objectives, pooling strategies, dimensionality reduction for serving cost, vector databases, and retrieval evaluation (NDCG, recall, graded relevance)
• Experience with fine-tuning and alignment workflows (SFT, DPO, LoRA, RLHF, RLVR, GRPO, reward modeling)
• Experience with feature engineering and feature serving platforms (e.g. Feast, Tecton, Hopsworks), distributed data processing frameworks (e.g. Spark, Flink, Ray), offline stores (e.g. Iceberg, Delta, Lance), and online stores (e.g. Redis, Cassandra, DynamoDB)
• Experience with Ray, Kubernetes, and cloud GPU infrastructure (AWS, GCP)
• Experience with ML governance, lineage, or compliance systems

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 $142,300 and $263,300, 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

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.