Cartographic Designer, Apple Maps

Apple•Cupertino, CA

11d

About The Position

Apple Maps is an essential way for people to navigate, discover, and understand the world. The team designs the look and feel of maps, combining cartography, graphic design, and 3D world building with emerging technology to create maps that balance function and form. This interdisciplinary role combines cartography, 3D modelling, prototyping, and emerging workflow technologies, built on strong graphic design skills and a confident command of colour, form, and typography. The designer creates complex graphic systems representing the world at varying scales and designs for multiple zoom levels, interactions, map styles, focus states, and hardware platforms. The work also includes building and animating 3D representations of urban and natural environments and helping define how the world is represented in three dimensions. Prototyping and tooling are central to the position. The designer creates functional tools and interactive prototypes using real data and code, ramping up quickly on internal technical systems to evaluate how ideas look and feel at scale. The role involves working with spatial data and its attributes, editing and processing data to inform design decisions, and creating tools that improve team-wide efficiency. The designer presents work in design and leadership reviews and cross-functional meetings, shares work at any stage of completion, develops multiple design directions, weighs tradeoffs, and makes decisions within project scope and time constraints. The role also develops agentic workflows that expand team capabilities and applies emerging technology to support and accelerate design work. It requires navigating tradeoffs among design goals, rendering performance, and data constraints, while managing multiple projects in a dynamic environment with uncertainty and changing priorities.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in design, cartography, geography, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Professional experience designing for digital, interactive map products.
Experience designing graphic systems using colour and typography for complex visual products.
Experience working with geospatial and map data.
Experience modelling, rendering, and animating 3D environments of the built and natural worlds.
Ability to balance focused, independent work with fast-paced, collaborative work in ambiguous or shifting conditions.
Ability to present work at varying stages of completion and incorporate feedback across multiple iterations.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing digital maps or similar data-driven visual products, including familiarity with raster and vector data formats.
Experience modelling, rendering, and animating 3D environments or objects.
Experience building or improving procedural modelling pipelines.
Experience building interactive prototypes using real data and code within a technical organization.
Experience building tools that improve a team’s workflow or efficiency.
Experience developing or applying agentic or AI-assisted workflows to design or technical work.
Ability to balance focused, independent work with fast-paced, collaborative work in ambiguous or shifting conditions.
Ability to present work at varying stages of completion and incorporate feedback across multiple iterations.

Responsibilities

Design complex graphic systems that represent the world at varying scales.
Design map experiences for multiple zoom levels, interactions, map styles, focus states, and hardware platforms.
Build and animate 3D representations of urban and natural environments.
Help define how the world is represented in three dimensions.
Create functional prototypes and tools, translating design direction into interactive working prototypes using real data and code.
Work with spatial data and data attributes, editing and processing data to support map design decisions.
Create tools that improve team-wide efficiency.
Present work in design reviews, leadership reviews, and cross-functional meetings.
Generate multiple design directions, weigh tradeoffs, incorporate feedback, and make decisions within project scope and time constraints.
Develop agentic workflows and apply emerging technology to support and accelerate design work.
Navigate tradeoffs among design goals, rendering performance, and data constraints while working across multiple projects.