Senior Software Engineer, Navigation Intelligence & Applied ML

Apple; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is hiring a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Navigation Intelligence in Cupertino to advance the Navigation Experience within Apple Maps. You will apply machine learning to on-device and backend systems, personalizing guidance while upholding privacy-first principles.

You will collaborate with design, routing algorithms, data science, and product teams to build scalable ML-powered features and deliver seamless, context-aware navigation experiences for billions of users worldwide.

Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or related field, with strong industry experience building large-scale, production-grade ML applications.
• Proven experience applying applied Machine Learning to solve complex, customer-facing technical problems (e.g., personalization, recommendation, contextual AI, or sequence modeling).
• Ability to write complex, highly-performant, clean, and maintainable solutions in C++.
• Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and software architecture.
• Strong problem-solving skills and comfort working with ambiguity, evolving requirements, and open-ended product questions.
• Good interpersonal and communication skills, possessing the ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a distributed, multi-functional team environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain navigation features and services in Apple Maps.
• Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models and intelligent features that directly power the navigation experience in Apple Maps.
• Explore and apply a range of technical approaches, from heuristics to deep learning, to personalize the navigation journey and adapt guidance to user context and real-time conditions.
• Write complex, highly-performant, and reliable production code (primarily in C++) to integrate ML models efficiently into high-scale backend services and on-device environments.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners to translate customer empathy into technical ML solutions.
• Participate in design and code reviews, contribute to architectural decisions, and build data pipelines for continuous model evaluation and improvement.
• Influence the future product direction for navigation intelligence with technical expertise, mentorship, and customer-focused thinking.

Skills

C++

Machine Learning

On-device ML

Algorithms

Distributed systems

Education

BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or related

Tools

Python

Spark

Kubernetes

Privacy-preserving ML

Job description

Summary

Join Apple and be part of a community where innovation thrives, creativity flourishes, and diverse perspectives are celebrated. At Apple Maps, specifically within the Navigation Experience team, we're not just enhancing navigation, we're revolutionizing how it integrates seamlessly into people's lives. Picture your work influencing smarter, more personalized, and intuitive experiences for hundreds of millions of users around the globe. As a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Navigation Intelligence, you'll work at the intersection of AI and user experience. You will play a critical role in shaping how people embark on and experience their journeys, using machine learning to make real-time guidance smarter, highly contextual, and deeply personal. You'll bring an ML and systems perspective that complements our product and engineering experts, helping us reimagine how navigation dynamically adapts to each individual user while strictly maintaining Apple's privacy-first approach. If you're passionate about solving hard technical problems at scale, and want your ML expertise to shape how billions of people navigate the physical world, this is your chance to make a meaningful difference.

Description

The Navigation Experience team is responsible for the end-to-end guidance experience across driving, cycling, walking, transit, and hiking. As an ML-focused engineer on our team, you will spearhead new initiatives to transform navigation into an experience that feels natural, intuitive, and tailored to a user's unique context. You'll work deep inside our guidance system, applying machine learning to solve complex problems, making our app reason about a journey the way a knowledgeable local would. This work is highly cross-functional: you will collaborate with multiple partners across design, routing algorithms, data science, and product to deliver seamless, integrated customer experiences. We have a modern development process, analyzing requirements, building and training models, implementing and experimenting iteratively, and optimizing solutions for on-device and backend execution. We support production systems serving billions of requests daily, so occasional support outside standard business hours may be required for on-call duties and critical project needs.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain navigation features and services in Apple Maps.


• Design, develop, and deploy machine learning models and intelligent features that directly power the navigation experience in Apple Maps.


• Explore and apply a range of technical approaches, from heuristics to deep learning, to personalize the navigation journey and adapt guidance to user context and real-time conditions.


• Write complex, highly-performant, and reliable production code (primarily in C++) to integrate ML models efficiently into high-scale backend services and on-device environments.


• Collaborate closely with cross-functional partners, including design, product, and other engineering teams, to translate customer empathy into technical ML solutions.


• Participate in design and code reviews, contribute to architectural decisions, and build data pipelines for continuous model evaluation and improvement.


• Influence the future product direction for navigation intelligence with technical expertise, mentorship, and customer-focused thinking.

Minimum Qualifications

• BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Mathematics, or related field, with strong industry experience building large-scale, production-grade ML applications.


• Proven experience applying applied Machine Learning to solve complex, customer-facing technical problems (e.g., personalization, recommendation, contextual AI, or sequence modeling).


• Ability to write complex, highly-performant, clean, and maintainable solutions in C++.


• Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and software architecture.


• Strong problem-solving skills and comfort working with ambiguity, evolving requirements, and open-ended product questions.


• Good interpersonal and communication skills, possessing the ability to work both independently and collaboratively in a distributed, multi-functional team environment.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with ML techniques applied to navigation, geospatial data, or time-series context.

Familiarity with privacy-preserving approaches to ML (such as federated learning or differential privacy) and data processing.

Experience with deep learning frameworks and writing Python tools for data exploration, prototyping, and pipeline development.

Familiarity with navigation use cases across different modalities (driving, transit, walking, cycling, hiking).

Experience with data pipelines, scalable data architectures, or cloud-native infrastructure (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Kubernetes) for model training and deployment.

Familiarity with macOS or Linux development environments.