Systems Engineer - Evaluation Engineering

Apple Inc.; Cupertino (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 278,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

Relocation assistance

Education reimbursement

Medical coverage

Job summary

Apple Inc. in Cupertino, CA is seeking a Distributed Systems Engineer to own the infrastructure powering our Siri Agentic Evaluation Platform.

You will design and build the execution engine that coordinates thousands of agent simulations, tests, and real-time metrics across devices. You will create self-service tooling, scalable APIs, and data pipelines with immutable lineage, while leveraging IaC and GitOps to run multi-tenant clusters.

Qualifications

• MS in computer science or equivalent.
• 7+ years of distributed systems experience.
• Proficiency in concurrency-oriented languages such as Python (asyncio) or Java.
• Experience designing robust, production APIs using gRPC/Protobuf, GraphQL, or REST (FastAPI).
• Kubernetes and cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

Responsibilities

• Architect and scale the core asynchronous engine coordinating thousands of parallel simulations, validations, and pipelines.
• Design and build self-service infrastructure, CLI tools, and internal APIs for easy integration into CI/CD workflows.
• Design, build, and maintain high-performance, type-safe APIs (gRPC/REST) for evaluation pipelines, trace data, and metrics.
• Build data pipelines with immutable data lineage for traceability of evaluation metrics.
• Own infrastructure-as-code and GitOps for multi-tenant clusters.
• Improve reliability, observability, and guardrails with distributed tracing, metrics, and alerting.

Skills

Python (asyncio)

Java

gRPC/Protobuf

GraphQL

REST (FastAPI)

Kubernetes

AWS/GCP/Azure

Education

MS in computer science

Tools

Terraform

GitHub Actions

ArgoCD

Istio/Linkerd

Job description

Cupertino, California, United States Machine Learning and AI

Siri Agentic Evaluation Platform. Evaluation is no longer just a static test suite—it is a highly dynamic, massive-scale distributed problem. Our platform enables teams to run high-throughput agentic simulations, orchestrate multi-model judging pipelines, and generate real-time observability dashboards across billions of tokens and complex data types.

Description

We are looking for a Distributed Systems Engineer to own the infrastructure powering our coreIn this role, you will design the execution engine that coordinates these complex evaluation loops. You will build systems that remain deterministic, fault-tolerant, and cost-efficient, even when coordinating massive parallel requests across heterogeneous device types(iPhones, Mac, iPads etc).

Responsibilities

• Distributed Execution Engine: Architect and scale the core asynchronous engine responsible for orchestrating thousands of parallel agent simulations, validation tests, and LLM-as-a-judge pipelines.
• Internal Developer Platform (IDP): Design and build self-service infrastructure, CLI tools, and internal APIs that allow ML and product teams to easily integrate evaluation pipelines into their CI/CD workflows.
• Backend API & Service Architecture: Design, build, and maintain highly performant, type-safe APIs (gRPC/REST) capable of serving complex evaluation pipelinee, trace data, and real-time generation metrics.
• Stream Processing & Lineage: Build robust data pipelines to ingest and transform high-volume execution traces. Ensure immutable data lineage so that every evaluation metric can be perfectly traced back to its raw generation for granular error attribution.
• Infrastructure-as-Code & GitOps: Own the deployment topologies of the evaluation platform across multi-tenant clusters using declarative infrastructure and continuous delivery practices.
• Reliability, Observability & Guardrails: Implement deep observability (distributed tracing, structured metrics, and alerting) across the platform. Design smart scheduling layers, token buckets, and circuit breakers to prevent downstream API rate-limiting or cascading cluster failures.

Minimum Qualifications

• MS in computer science or equivalent
• 7+ years of experience as distributed systems engineer, platform engineer or equivalent.
• Systems & Backend Languages: Strong proficiency in languages optimized for concurrency and enterprise scale, such as Python (asyncio) or Java.
• API Design & Ecosystems: Deep expertise in designing robust, versioned production APIs using gRPC/Protobuf, GraphQL, or REST (FastAPI).
• Cloud Native Architecture: Advanced experience with Kubernetes (orchestration, custom operators, service meshes like Istio or Linkerd) and cloud providers (AWS, GCP, or Azure).

Preferred Qualifications

• Relational & Analytical Databases: Strong experience modeling complex relational data and trace hierarchies using PostgreSQL, combined with high-throughput analytical query layers.
• Orchestration & Messaging: Experience designing asynchronous, event-driven architectures using Kafka, AWS SQS/SNS, RabbitMQ, or Redis Streams.
• Experience building Agentic RAG platforms or developer-facing infrastructure tooling.
• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC): proficiency with Terraform to manage infrastructure declaratively.
• CI/CD & DevEx: Experience building automated, containerized deployment pipelines (GitHub or ArgoCD) with an emphasis on keeping developer feedback loops fast and reliable.

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 $150,400 and $277,600, 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

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.

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Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.