Software Engineer - Athena, Ai & Data Platforms (AiDP)

Apple; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is seeking a Software Engineer for the Athena platform to build scalable data services and ML pipelines used by data scientists and partners for real-time and batch analytics.

You will own design and delivery of low-latency services, monitor pipelines, and help optimize cost and performance. 5+ years in production-grade software and experience with Spark, Kafka or similar tech are preferred.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building production-grade software or data platforms at scale.
• Proficient in Java, Python, or Scala.
• Hands-on experience with Spark, Flink, Kafka, or similar distributed data technologies.
• Experience designing, optimizing, and debugging large-scale production data pipelines.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical major

Responsibilities

• Turn business and ML requirements into scalable platform and decisioning systems
• Build resilient, low-latency services for real-time inference and streaming data
• Define gold-standard CI/CD, observability, and SLA practices for Data and ML
• Ship automated pipelines powering features, training, and online serving
• Drive performance and cost optimizations across Data and ML workloads
• Own data and model health with monitoring, validation, and drift detection

Skills

Distributed data platform design

System design & performance

Strong communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related major

Tools

Spark

Flink

Kafka

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Job description

Summary

AI & Data Platforms (AiDP) is IS&T's engine for AI-powered innovation. The team brings together data, application development, and machine learning — including generative AI — along with data services and customer success functions, to help IS&T build solutions more efficiently and streamline the adoption and embedding of generative AI across Apple.

Athena Platform Services (APS) is looking for a talented Software Engineer to play a meaningful role in building data services and platforms that run machine learning analytics to prevent fraud, waste and abuse across Apple. Athena is a machine learning platform committed to providing high-quality, data-driven risk decisioning. We are passionate about operational excellence and providing data-driven solutions with meaningful results!

Description

As a Software Engineer on the Athena platform, you will be working with large-scale data and decisioning platforms used by data scientists, analysts, and business partners. This position supports both online solutions for near-real-time decisioning, and offline solutions for batch analytics and reporting.

Key Responsibilities

• Turn business and ML requirements into scalable platform and decisioning systems
• Build resilient, low-latency services for real-time inference and streaming data
• Define gold-standard CI/CD, observability, and SLA practices for Data and ML
• Ship automated pipelines powering features, training, and online serving
• Drive performance and cost optimizations across Data and ML workloads
• Own data and model health with monitoring, validation, and drift detection

Minimum Qualifications

• 5+ years building production-grade software or data platforms at scale.
• Proficient in Java, Python, or Scala.
• Hands-on experience with Spark, Flink, Kafka, or similar distributed data technologies.
• Experience designing, optimizing, and debugging large-scale production data pipelines.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical major

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong systems thinking, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Demonstrated bias for action, curiosity, and ability to learn new technologies quickly.
• Experience with ML/AI platforms, including feature engineering, model training, or GenAI workflows.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies.
• Experience with Alibaba Cloud or other cloud platforms in regulated or region-specific environments, including PIPL.
• Experience mentoring engineers and driving technical collaboration.