Staff Data Engineer

Apple Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Apple Inc. in Austin, Texas, seeks a Staff Data Engineer to own the data model and production pipelines behind the Security data platform. You will shape architecture, enforce contracts, and scale data services that enable risk enrichment and ownership visibility across teams.

The role demands deep distributed data experience, strong SQL, and cross-functional leadership to drive production-ready pipelines that power posture analytics for iCloud, App Store, Music, TV+, and Commerce.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience with Spark and distributed data technologies (Hadoop, Presto, Flink, Druid) for large-scale data pipelines.
• Proficiency in at least one of Java, Python or Scala.
• Deep expertise in Data Principles, Data Architecture & Data Modeling; strong SQL skills.
• Able to solve loosely defined problems with meticulous attention to detail.
• Experience in a complex, matrixed organization with cross-functional projects.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills for technology strategy discussions.
• Familiarity with AWS cloud resources (S3, EC2, RDS, etc).
• Familiarity with OSI model and networking concepts (load balancers, routers, tagging, NetFlow).
• Understanding of full tech stack primitives from firmware to containers and apps.

Responsibilities

• Lead data engineering and data architecture for the RVM data platform and posture analytics.
• Own data model and pipeline contracts used across teams; productionize prototypes.
• Drive ownership attribution and risk enrichment as a service rather than ad-hoc work.
• Provide technical direction across a large engineering organization and partner with multiple teams.

Skills

Spark

Hadoop

Presto

Flink

Druid

Java

Python

Scala

Data modeling

SQL

Cloud basics (AWS)

Networking basics

System architecture

Cross-functional leadership

Communication

OSImodel familiarity

Security data platform

Tools

AWS

Elasticsearch

Solr

HBase

Cassandra

MongoDB

Kafka

Kafka Streams

Job description

Austin, Texas, United States Software and Services

We are the Risk and Vulnerability Management (RVM) team in Apple Services Engineering (ASE) Security. We manage security risk for the infrastructure, platforms, and services behind iCloud, App Store, Apple Music, TV+, and Commerce. Findings reach us from scanners, red team engagements, design reviews, vendor advisories, threat intelligence, and bug bounty. Our job is to turn all of that into one prioritized backlog engineering teams can work from, and a posture picture leadership can trust.Most of that job is data work. Signal arrives from dozens of systems at different quality and age, and it rarely says which asset, which service, or who owns it, so someone pieces that together by hand before anyone can act on it. That manual step sets the ceiling on how fast we identify and triage risk, and on how fast our partners can fix it. We are consolidating this onto one security data platform: a system of record for findings, a graph for ownership and blast radius, and a lakehouse for posture metrics and analytics.

Description

We are looking for a Staff Data Engineer to lead the data engineering and data architecture behind it. You will own the data model and the pipeline contracts other teams build against, move pipelines from prototype into production the business depends on, and make ownership attribution and risk enrichment a service instead of repeated one-off work. Success here takes deep distributed data engineering experience, real data judgment, and the ability to hold a technical direction across a large, matrixed engineering organization.

Minimum Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience working with Spark and other distributed data technologies (e.g. Hadoop, Presto, Flink, Druid) for building efficient & large scale data pipelines
• Highly proficient in at least one of Java, Python or Scala
• Deep expertise in Data Principles, Data Architecture & Data Modeling, Strong SQL skills
• Strong problem solver with meticulous attention to detail, capable of taking on loosely defined problems
• Experience working in a complex, matrixed organization involving cross-functional, and/or cross-business projects
• Strong communication and collaboration skills & ability to lead high-level discussions on technology strategy and approach
• Conceptually familiar with AWS cloud resources (S3, EC2, RDS etc)
• Conceptually familiar with OSI model and understanding of how network works (Load Balancer, Routers, network tagging, NetFlow)
• Conceptually familiar of the full technology stack (from BMCs, Firmware, to OS layer, to containers and applications) primitives

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Cloud Computing platforms like Amazon AWS, Google Cloud
• Experience with building stream-processing applications using Apache Flink, Spark-Streaming, Apache Storm, Kafka Streams or others
• Experience with Search systems (such as ElasticSearch, Solr), NoSQL datastores (such as HBase, Cassandra, MongoDB)
• Experience building distributed, high-volume data services is a plus

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

At Apple, we believe accessibility is a fundamental human right. You’ll find that idea reflected in everything here — in our culture, our benefits and our digital tools. By welcoming as many perspectives as possible, we help you build a career where you feel like you belong. Learn about accessibility in Apple’s workplace Learn about reasonable accommodations for job applicants

Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.