Staff Software Engineer, ASE Storage Infrastructure

Apple Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 205,400 - 308,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical and dental coverage

Employee stock programs

Relocation assistance

Tuition reimbursement

Job summary

Apple Inc. in Seattle, WA seeks a Staff Software Engineer for ASE Storage Infrastructure to shape Elastic Disk features and architecture. You will own replication and metadata systems, improve availability and durability, and drive performance while mentoring engineers and partnering with storage teams across Apple.

The role emphasizes leading end-to-end durability efforts, cross-team collaboration, and advancing storage infrastructure at scale.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software development experience building infrastructure, systems, or distributed services.
• 5+ years designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed storage or database systems in production.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems-level language; Rust, C++, or C proficiency.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems — concurrency and failure with attention to detail.
• Experience owning services through full lifecycle with measurable availability and durability SLOs.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical vision for the Replication & Metadata Systems powering Elastic Disk.
• Evolve replication protocol to strengthen availability, correctness, durability.
• Advance end-to-end durability: repair, replica reconstruction, scrubbers, backups & snapshots.
• Drive performance of replication and network data path by profiling bottlenecks.
• Raise engineering standards for reviews and testing with AI tooling.
• Represent the team in cross-org efforts to unify replication foundation across storage backends.
• Mentor and grow engineers; lead design reviews and collaborate across teams.

Skills

Rust

C++

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

MS or PhD in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Staff Software Engineer, ASE Storage Infrastructure

Seattle, Washington, United States Software and Services

Apple Services Engineering (ASE) designs, builds, and operates the cloud infrastructure, server systems, and platform technologies that power many of Apple's most beloved experiences. Within ASE, the Storage Platforms organization develops the systems that store, protect, and serve Apple's data at massive scale, with a mission to deliver storage that is durable, secure, highly available, and operated with excellence. Engineers on this team will have the rare opportunity to work on storage device-optimized low‑level storage, large‑scale distributed systems, and high‑performance IO stacks operating at mission‑critical levels of availability and durability. Elastic Disk provides foundational block storage services to Apple's compute platforms. We are building a next‑generation block storage system designed from the ground up for low latency, high availability, and strong durability — serving as a critical building block for compute workloads across Apple.

Description

You will shape Elastic Disk's features and architecture as it scales orders of magnitude, setting the multi‑year technical direction for replication, durability, metadata, and the data path. In this role, you will:

• Own the technical vision for the Replication & Metadata Systems powering Elastic Disk.
• Evolve our replication protocol to strengthen availability, correctness, durability to improve the overall reliability of the service as we scale.
• Advance end‑to‑end durability: next‑generation repair, replica reconstruction, continuous scrubbing, replication‑metadata checksums, and point‑in‑time backup & snapshot.
• Drive performance of the replication and network data path — profiling bottlenecks and evaluating next‑gen network stacks to keep replication off the critical latency path.
• Raise the engineering bar through best practices of AI toolings and insist on high standards for reviews and testing.
• Represent the team in cross‑org efforts to shape a unified replication foundation for Apple's storage backends.
• Mentor and grow engineers; lead through design reviews, technical writing, and hands‑on collaboration with storage engine, control plane, compute platform, and storage reliability partners.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software development experience building infrastructure, systems, or distributed services.
• 5+ years designing, building, and operating large‑scale distributed storage or database systems in production.
• Deep expertise in at least one systems‑level language; strong Rust, C++, or C proficiency preferred.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems — proven ability to reason about correctness under concurrency and failure; meticulous attention to detail.
• Experience owning services through the full lifecycle: design, implementation, rollout, on‑call, and incident response, with measurable availability and durability SLOs.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, a related engineering field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or PhD in Computer Science or a related field.
• Strong storage and database background — having led or been a core contributor to a distributed storage system, database, or storage engine at scale.
• Experience building block storage, distributed file systems, distributed databases, or replicated storage engines at scale (e.g., EBS‑class systems, Ceph, HDFS, Pangu, GFS‑family, Spanner, CockroachDB, FoundationDB).
• Deep knowledge of data durability techniques: replication, erasure coding, scrubbers, silent‑corruption detection, and automated repair/reconstruction.
• Track record of driving cross‑org technical initiatives or shared platform abstractions across multiple teams.

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 $205,400 and $308,500, 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.

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.

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.