Software Engineer - Observability

Socket.dev; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 170,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple is seeking a versatile engineer for the Observability team within ASE to design, build, and operate the control plane tooling for our time series database at scale. You will own end-to-end delivery from requirements to on-call support, balancing product features with reliability.

You will collaborate across software engineering and data platforms, contribute to distributed systems, and drive automation, provisioning, orchestration, and self-healing capabilities in production.

Qualifications

• BS or MS in CS or equivalent5+ years of industry experience.
• Deep understanding of core CS concepts including data structures, algorithms, and concurrent programming.
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, Scala, Go, or Python.
• Experience designing, implementing, and operating highly scalable infrastructure services in production.
• Deep understanding and work experience in distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience building automation and tooling for deployment, orchestration, and operations at scale.
• Strong attention to detail, excellent analytical capabilities, and a bias toward reducing operational toil.
• Passion for developing clear, robust, and maintainable software and systems.

Responsibilities

• Own the control plane that makes our TSDB reliable, scalable, and easy to operate.
• Move between building operational tooling and shipping core product features.
• Own problems end to end, from requirement gathering through design, implementation, rollout, and on-call operability.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to design and implement provisioning, orchestration, scaling, health monitoring, and self-healing capabilities.

Skills

Data structures

Algorithms

Concurrent programming

Distributed systems

Java/Scala/Go/Python

Automation tooling

On-call operability

OpenTelemetry/Observability

Education

BS in CS or equivalent

MS in CS or equivalent

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

GitOps

Custom controllers

Operators

Job description

The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) team is building the next generation of foundational tools that empower software developers at Apple to build products that our customers love. The Observability team within ASE is a fast moving, highly skilled team that is designing and building a suite of platforms and services that help Apple engineers observe and get insights into their systems. If the thought of working with petabytes of data interests you, this is the place to be. Our systems must scale globally, stay highly available, and "just work," while supporting some of the largest services in the world. We are seeking a versatile engineer who thrives wearing multiple hats. In this role you will primarily design and build the control plane tooling and automation that operates our time series database (TSDB) in production at scale, spanning provisioning, orchestration, scaling, health, and self-healing. Just as importantly, you will not be confined to tooling: you will regularly pick up core developer tasks on the data platform itself, contributing to the distributed systems that ingest, store, and query time series data. If you love the intersection of software engineering and large-scale operations, and you want your work to make massive fleets effortless to run, this is the place to be.

Description

We are looking for an engineer who blends strong software engineering fundamentals with a deep operational mindset. You will own the control plane that makes our TSDB reliable, scalable, and easy to operate, and you will fluidly move between building operational tooling and shipping product features. You should be comfortable owning problems end to end, from requirement gathering through design, implementation, rollout, and on-call operability.

Minimum Qualifications

• BS or MS in CS or equivalent5+ years of industry experience
• Deep understanding of core CS concepts including data structures, algorithms, and concurrent programming
• Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Java, Scala, Go, or Python
• Experience designing, implementing, and operating highly scalable infrastructure services in production
• Deep understanding and work experience in distributed systems
• Hands-on experience building automation and tooling for deployment, orchestration, and operations at scale
• Strong attention to detail, excellent analytical capabilities, and a bias toward reducing operational toil
• Passion for developing clear, robust, and maintainable software and systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building control plane or fleet management tooling for stateful/data systems in production
• Strong DevOps skillset: CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform), configuration management, and GitOps workflows
• Hands-on experience with container orchestration and scheduling (Kubernetes, operators, custom controllers)
• Familiarity with time series database internals and the operational challenges of running them at scale
• Experience with Observability solutions using OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana
• Experience with columnar storage systems and/or building query engines is a plus
• Experience building high performant systems in Rust is a plus
• Comfortable wearing multiple hats, moving between operational tooling and core product/feature development
• Great communication skills