SRE Manager, Apple Services Engineering

Apple, Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 226,000 - 338,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee stock programs

Relocation support

Discretionary bonuses

Job summary

Apple seeks an SRE Manager in Seattle to lead a team of SREs responsible for reliability and operations of customer-facing cloud services. You will set technical direction, own people management, and partner with product engineering to ensure observability, resilience, and scalability.

You will plan roadmaps, manage SLOs and incidents, and mentor engineers to grow into senior roles while collaborating with partner teams for prioritized delivery over 6–24 months.

Qualifications

• 5+ years operating distributed, customer-facing production services at scale.
• 2+ years managing or leading engineering or SRE teams, including hiring and performance management.
• Hands-on technical lead for a production service or team with code contributions.
• Experience with release and deployment processes, including gradual rollout and config management at scale.
• Experience with capacity planning, scale testing, and disaster-recovery exercises for stateful and stateless services.
• Experience with observability tooling (metrics, logging, tracing) driving planning with data.
• Fluency in Java, Python, or Go to engage in design discussions and code reviews.
• Experience building resourcing and hiring plans for a technical team and developing roadmaps with leadership.
• Track record of growing engineers into senior and staff-level roles.
• Clear technical communication and sound judgment under pressure, including during incidents.

Responsibilities

• Own technical direction and decision-making for products and domains with partner teams.
• Own roadmap planning, sprint planning, and project prioritization with leadership and partners.
• Monitor health of team products via SLOs, incidents, release quality, and project planning; provide updates for 6–24 months.
• Maintain awareness of production changes and provide feedback on reliability and observability.
• Lead incident and production-issue management; propose improvements to close gaps.
• Build and maintain partnerships between Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering.
• Provide performance feedback and career-growth guidance to engineers.
• Own resourcing and hiring plans; maintain an effective, staffed team for reliable operation at scale.
• Communicate team and project health regularly to leadership and partner teams.

Skills

Java

Python

Go

Observability

Capacity planning

Deployment

People leadership

Engineering growth

Hands-on leadership

Technical communication

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Kubernetes

CI/CD tooling

Job description

Seattle, Washington, United States Software and Services

Millions of people rely on our services every day, and they expect them to just work. Our Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) organization owns the reliability, operability, and performance of Apple's customer‑facing cloud services, supporting a massive global user base.We're looking for an SRE Manager to lead a team of SREs. You will be an accountable leader, owning both the technical direction and people leadership for your team. You'll partner closely with product engineering teams to ensure the services we run are observable, resilient, and ready to scale — and you'll build a team where engineers grow and do their best work.

Description

As an SRE Manager, you will own the reliability and operations of Apple's customer‑facing cloud services and lead the SREs who run them. You'll set technical direction for your domains in alignment with partner engineering teams and organizational priorities, while also owning the people side of the role: hiring, resourcing, performance, and career growth.Day to day, you'll plan and prioritize your team's roadmap, track service health through SLOs, incidents, release quality, and project tracking, and keep leadership and partner teams informed with a clear plan for the next 6–24 months. You'll build strong relationships with the partner and upstream engineering teams you depend on, fostering a healthy partnership between development and SRE. You'll also be a hands‑on leader — stepping in with deep technical and product context to lead incident response and support production changes when it matters most.We use data to drive decisions, from SLOs and incident trends to deployment statistics and capacity forecasts. We're looking for someone who continuously raises the bar on reliability, leverages automation and tooling to reduce toil, and measures the impact of their team's work.

Responsibilities

• Own technical direction and decision‑making for your products and domains, in alignment with partner engineering teams and organizational direction
• Own roadmap planning, sprint planning, and project prioritization, managing expectations with leadership and partner engineering teams
• Assess and monitor the health of your team's products — including SLOs, incidents, release quality, and project planning discipline — and provide leadership and partner teams with regular updates and a clear plan for the next 6–24 months
• Maintain awareness of production changes made by your engineering teams, providing feedback on reliability and observability where needed
• Lead incident and production‑issue management and mitigation, stay current with software development lifecycle standards, and propose product and platform improvements to close gaps
• Build and maintain strong partnerships with engineering teams, fostering close collaboration between Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering
• Provide regular performance feedback and career‑growth guidance that helps engineers advance, motivating them to be creative and increase their impact
• Own resourcing and hiring plans, building and sustaining an effective, appropriately staffed team capable of reliably running services at scale
• Communicate team, product, and project health regularly and transparently to engineering leadership and partner teams

Minimum Qualifications

• + years of experience operating and improving distributed, customer‑facing production services at scale, including debugging across the full service stack and proposing concrete architectural or process improvements
• 2+ years of experience managing or leading engineering or SRE teams, including hiring, performance management, and career development
• Experience as a technical lead for a production service or team, with hands‑on contributions
• Experience with release and deployment processes, including gradual/safe rollout practices and configuration management at scale
• Experience with capacity planning, scale testing, and disaster‑recovery/fail‑over exercises for stateful and stateless services
• Experience with observability tooling (metrics, logging, tracing), using data such as SLOs, incidents, deployment statistics, and capacity to drive planning and leadership updates
• Fluency in at least one of Java, Python, or Go — sufficient to engage credibly in technical and design discussions and code‑level review
• Experience building and executing resourcing and hiring plans for a technical team, and developing roadmaps with leadership and partner engineering teams
• Track record of growing engineers into senior and staff‑level roles
• Clear technical communication and sound judgment under pressure, including during incidents
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Familiarity with container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes), service proxies and load balancing, messaging and caching systems, and infrastructure‑as‑code and continuous‑delivery tooling
• Experience driving cross‑team standardization efforts or sponsoring organization‑wide process and tooling initiatives
• Experience using automation or AI‑assisted workflows to reduce toil and improve operational outcomes

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 $225,600 and $338,400, 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

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