Compute Runtime Software Engineer

Apple • Seattle, WA

1h

About The Position

The Apple Services Engineering team builds container and virtualization runtime technology for Apple's compute platform. The team designs and develops virtualization-based runtimes for virtual machines and Linux containers across Apple's data center and platforms, with privacy, security, and performance as core requirements. It also maintains Apple Container, an open-source project that provides native container support on macOS desktops.

This role focuses on foundational systems work involving kernel and container security, image distribution, filesystems, and virtualization. The work includes greenfield challenges associated with running on Apple's hardware in the data center, as well as open-source desktop tooling. The engineer is expected to bring expertise across multiple technical areas, design major features, resolve complex and ambiguous problems, and own significant technologies from inception through implementation. The role also contributes technical direction and standards across the organization and includes mentoring engineers at all levels.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent related experience.
• At least 3 years of software design and development experience in infrastructure engineering, such as compute, storage, or network virtualization, with emphasis on microservices architectures and containerization.
• Advanced programming proficiency in C, C++, Swift, or Go, with a track record of designing and developing high-performance, secure, scalable, and reliable systems.
• Hands-on experience with some or all of Linux containerization, Linux filesystems, image distribution, content storage, and kernel and container security.
• Track record of owning technical design end-to-end, from design documents and architecture tradeoffs through implementation and review.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Linux system programming.
• Experience leading code reviews to promote team standards, correctness, and test coverage, and to raise the technical bar for other engineers.
• Experience defining and executing test strategies for complex systems, including regression prevention, negative-case validation, and security testing.
• Development experience in cloud security, container or Linux kernel security, or API security.
• Experience troubleshooting and analyzing metrics to identify resource contention and bottlenecks.
• Experience designing benchmarks and load tests to characterize performance and establish scalability models.
• Development experience with container orchestration systems such as Docker or Kubernetes.
• Development experience with virtualization and container technologies such as Apple Container, Kata, Firecracker, or KubeVirt.
• Systems programming experience on Darwin with Swift.
• Programming system virtualization based on Cloud Hypervisor, rust-vmm, macOS Virtualization Framework, QEMU, or KVM.
• Understanding of shared networked storage solutions such as iSCSI, NFS, and cluster filesystems.

Responsibilities

• Design and develop virtualization-based runtimes for virtual machines and Linux containers across Apple's data center and platforms.
• Build and maintain foundational systems involving kernel and container security, image distribution, filesystems, and virtualization.
• Own technical designs and significant technologies end-to-end, from design documentation and architecture decisions through implementation and review.
• Resolve complex, ambiguous technical problems and drive ideas from inception to implementation.
• Contribute technical direction and standards across the organization.
• Mentor engineers at all levels.
• Collaborate on and contribute to open-source projects, including Apple Container.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior