Software Engineering Technical Lead, Apple Card & Savings

Apple Inc.; Cary (NC); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Card & Savings is seeking a Software Engineering Technical Lead to architect distributed services, stay hands-on in code, and set technical direction across teams in Cary, NC. You will drive critical initiatives, manage complex integrations with financial partners, and lead engineering excellence with a strong DevOps mindset.

You will mentor engineers, shape platform architecture, and ensure reliability, security, and customer trust while delivering high-quality software at scale.

Qualifications

• Architected, built, and operated mission-critical distributed systems at large scale.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems: consistency, latency, throughput, idempotency, retries.
• Expert hands-on software development in Kotlin or Java.
• Extensive incident response leadership and SLO definition experience.
• Led cross-team projects from conception to production with external partners.
• Experience using generative AI tools across the software lifecycle.
• Testing-first approach: unit, integration, contract, end-to-end testing.
• No formal degree required; mindset and initiative matter; ability to apply advanced skills.
• Experience using generative AI tools in the software development lifecycle.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and operate mission-critical distributed services powering Apple Card & Savings.
• Lead large multi-quarter engineering efforts including complex integrations with financial partners.
• Drive technical discussions, author specifications, and represent Apple externally.
• Define and enforce SLOs, release strategies, and automation standards.
• Lead incident response and translate learnings into architectural improvements.
• Review code and designs; mentor senior engineers and raise engineering standards.
• Define and champion AI-assisted development standards across the team.
• Define and champion the team's standards for AI-assisted development, evaluating and adopting tooling that measurably improves code quality and review throughput across the broader engineering org

Skills

Kotlin

Java

Spring

AI tooling

Testing strategy

AI-assisted development

Communication & collaboration

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Datadog

OpenTelemetry

Kafka

Kafka

Job description

Software Engineering Technical Lead, Apple Card & Savings

Cary, North Carolina, United States Software and Services

The Apple Card & Savings team is building the financial products that put users in control of their money. We built Apple Card to reinvent how credit cards work, and we continue to launch groundbreaking features used by millions of people every day. We are looking for a technical lead who craves the challenge of architecting mission-critical systems at scale, sets technical direction across teams, and is equally at home in a design review, a production incident, or a technical negotiation with a financial partner.

Description

You'll lead the architecture and evolution of the distributed services that power Apple Card and Savings, while staying hands-on in code and operations. You'll be given the flexibility to drive creative solutions, the support of a talented and driven team, and the autonomy and responsibility to take full ownership of critical systems.Our team operates as DevOps: we build what we run. You'll shape the architecture of our platform through deep experience operating, monitoring, and supporting it on call, and you'll set the bar for how we ship and run software — safe, progressive releases, clear service level objectives, and automation over manual toil. You'll lead large, multi-quarter efforts — including complex integrations with financial institution and payment network partners and other Apple services — from conception through production, with reliability and customer trust as non-negotiables.As a technical leader, you'll drive technical discussions across teams and organizations, write specifications, represent Apple in technical discussions with external partners, review code and designs, mentor senior engineers, and raise the engineering bar for the team. Success in this role requires strong self-motivation, crisp and clear communication, a highly collaborative approach, and the ability to define and influence engineering strategy well beyond your own team.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build, and operate mission-critical distributed services that power Apple Card and Savings at large scale
• Lead large, multi-quarter engineering efforts — including complex integrations with financial institution and payment network partners — from conception through production
• Drive technical discussions across teams and organizations, authoring specifications and representing Apple in external partner negotiations
• Define and enforce service level objectives, progressive release strategies, and automation standards to eliminate manual toil
• Lead incident response, extract operational learnings, and translate them into lasting architectural improvements
• Review code and designs, raising the engineering bar and ensuring systems are built for testability from the outset
• Mentor senior engineers and shape the engineering strategy and culture of the broader team
• Define and champion the team's standards for AI-assisted development, evaluating and adopting tooling that measurably improves code quality and review throughput across the broader engineering org

Minimum Qualifications

• A demonstrated track record of architecting, building, and operating mission-critical distributed systems at large scale, while remaining hands-on in code.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems trade-offs in consistency, latency, and throughput, and of data correctness patterns (e.g. idempotency, exactly-once processing, reconciliation).
• Expert hands-on software development skills in Kotlin or Java.
• Extensive operational experience: leading incident response, defining service level objectives (SLOs), and turning operational learnings into architectural improvements.
• A track record of leading complex, cross-team projects from conception to production — including large migrations or platform changes — and driving consensus with diverse audiences such as global teams and external partners.
• A testing-first approach to engineering: designing systems for testability from the outset, writing tests as an integral part of development, and defining testing strategy (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) for complex services.
• No formal degree is required. What matters most is your mindset, your initiative, and your demonstrated ability to apply advanced skills to real-world applications.
• Experience using generative AI tools throughout the software development lifecycle to produce high-quality software.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep expertise with Spring and with high-volume REST and/or gRPC services (server-to-server or mobile client facing).
• Experience in payments, banking, or other regulated financial domains, including leading integrations with external financial partners and designing within compliance, consumer-protection, and privacy requirements (e.g. change management, separation of duties, PCI).
• Experience architecting containerized, cloud-native applications (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, AWS) designed for multi-region resilience, failover, graceful degradation, and self-healing, and validated through load and failure testing.
• Experience designing CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and progressive release strategies (e.g. canary deployments, feature flags, automated rollback).
• Experience defining observability strategy (e.g. Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry), including business-level monitoring and high-quality alerts that detect issues before customers or partners do.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging (e.g. Kafka or equivalent event streaming) and optimizing SQL/NoSQL databases for scale (e.g. Aurora, DynamoDB).
• A strong understanding of security, privacy, and cryptography for protecting sensitive customer and financial data (e.g. mTLS, PKI and certificate lifecycle management, JWT).

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