Senior Software Engineer, Apple Ads

Responsibilities

You will design, develop, and operate high-performance, internet-scale backend systems for real-time ad selection. You will collaborate cross-functionally to build scalable data processing pipelines and ensure high availability for Apple's advertising platforms.

Requirements

Candidates must have 6+ years of experience in architecting internet-scale server software and strong proficiency in languages like Go, Java, or Rust. A bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience is required, along with expertise in distributed systems and data processing technologies.

Skills

• Distributed systems
• Go
• Java
• Rust
• C++
• Scala
• Micro-services
• Lucene
• Solr
• Elasticsearch
• Cassandra
• Kafka
• Spark
• Flink
• AWS
• Kubernetes

About this role

Apple is where we use the power of technology to enrich people's lives. Every
new product we build, service we create, or Apple Store experience we deliver is
the result of us making each other's ideas stronger. That happens because every
one of us shares a belief that we can make something wonderful and share it with
the world, changing lives for the better. It's the diversity of our people and
their thinking that inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do.
When we bring everybody in, we can do the best work of our lives. Here, you'll
do more than join something — you'll add something. Join the Apple Ads
Engineering team and help build an advertising platform that benefits both
customers and advertisers. Our technology makes advertising possible on the App
Store, Apple News, Stocks, and Apple TV — helping people discover content,
supporting creators and publishers, and connecting advertisers of all sizes with
engaged audiences, all with the unwavering commitment to privacy you expect from
Apple. In this role, you will design, develop, and launch the highly-performant,
internet-scale backend systems that select and deliver the right ads in real
time, collaborating across engineering, product, and infrastructure to bring
elegant solutions into production at Apple scale.

DESCRIPTION

You will design, develop, and operate the distributed services that make
real-time ad selection possible at Apple. You will architect and build
low-latency, high-availability, high-throughput ad-serving systems in a cloud
environment, engineer secure and scalable data processing pipelines that operate
on petabyte-scale datasets, and implement performant services that handle very
high data volumes and QPS. You will work cross-functionally to ensure that
optimal and correct ads are available for real-time selection, and that
observability and flexibility are provided for stakeholders. While this role
focuses on the candidate retrieval part of Apple Ads, we are not constrained by
organization structure and offer the flexibility to contribute across a variety
of backend systems, including opportunities to apply algorithmic search, machine
learning, NLP, and AI to hard retrieval problems. You will write clean,
efficient, well-documented code, participate in code reviews, and mentor other
engineers on the team. Collaboration with internal partners across indexing,
search, serving, operations, and program management to define requirements and
deliver high-quality solutions is essential. You should be passionate about
building products that protect user privacy and thrive in a fast-paced
environment with rapidly changing priorities — and have fun doing it.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS

6+ years of industry experience architecting and developing internet-scale
server software for Linux systems, including scalable micro-services or
data-driven platforms. Strong background in computer science fundamentals,
including algorithms and data structures. Strong coding skills in Go, Java,
Rust, C++, Scala, or a similar OOP/Functional language. Hands-on experience
designing and operating scalable micro-services. Experience with search
technologies such as Lucene, Solr, or Elasticsearch. Expertise with NoSQL
datastores (e.g., Cassandra). Proficiency with data processing technologies
(e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink) and methods for processing petabyte-scale datasets.
Experience with AWS services such as Amazon S3, EC2, and EKS/Kubernetes. Strong
problem-solving and debugging skills. Demonstrated ability to work on complex
problems and systems, alone or as part of a team, to deliver complete systems
end to end. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability
to work effectively with technical and non-technical cross-functional teams,
including operations and project management partners. Bachelor's degree in
Computer Science or equivalent experience.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

Experience creating groundbreaking technology for algorithmic search, machine
learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence. Experience
building ad-serving, recommendation, or large-scale retrieval systems.
Familiarity with real-time bidding, candidate retrieval, or ranking pipelines.
Experience operating services with strict latency and availability SLOs.
Familiarity with privacy-preserving system design and data-handling practices.
Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals — consensus,
replication, and fault tolerance. A desire to work in a fast-paced and
challenging environment, and a fast learner with strong motivation for growing
and learning new technologies.

About Apple

Computers and Electronics Manufacturing · 10,001+ employees · headquartered in Cupertino, California · founded 1976