Data Engineer (Data Products - Apple Ads)

Apple • Cupertino, CA

7h

About The Position

Apple Ads brings a customer-centric approach to advertising, helping people find what they're looking for and enabling advertisers to grow their businesses. Our technology powers ads and sponsorships across various Apple Services like the App Store, Apple News, Apple Maps, MLS, and F1. We prioritize user privacy, thoughtful ad integration, and delivering value to advertisers of all sizes. You will join a team of world-class engineers applying leading-edge technologies to create exceptional customer experiences and provide data-driven insights to inform strategy and decisions. This role requires 1-4 years of experience in software engineering, preferably in the ads or media sector, with a strong understanding of scalable approaches and experience in Agile environments. Being a collaborative team member under tight deadlines is crucial. The level and scope of the role will be adjusted based on your experience. At Apple Ads, we are developing the next generation of privacy-focused advertising capabilities, working at the forefront of data engineering, machine learning, and privacy at Apple's scale. We continuously develop data products to enhance user experiences and drive value for developers and publishers.

Requirements

• 1+ years of industry experience building scalable data pipelines and machine learning systems, or other distributed software, at scale
• Strong computer science and software engineering fundamentals
• Proficiency in modern programming languages such as Rust, Python, Java, or Scala
• Experience with distributed systems and data processing technologies (e.g. Spark, Kafka, Flink)
• Experience building and scaling systems on premise and in the cloud
• Solid understanding of data structures, algorithms, and system design principles
• Ability to communicate effectively with cross-functional technical and non-technical teams
• Hands-on experience using LLMs (e.g. Claude, Gemini) in daily engineering work — for code generation, review, debugging, test writing, agentic loops, and evaluation systems— to continually improve software engineering skills and velocity
• Excellent collaborative skills
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, or a related field

Nice To Haves

• Experience with NoSQL datastores (e.g. Cassandra, Keyspaces, ElastiCache)
• Experience with lakehouse and Iceberg table formats
• Experience with anomaly detection
• Experience with A/B experimentation frameworks
• History of driving reliability, efficiency, or cost improvements, and mentoring other engineers
• Comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment with ambiguous requirements
• Prior experience in the advertising industry is a huge plus

Responsibilities

• Engineer secure, scalable data and machine learning systems across real-time, near-real-time, and batch execution contexts using Spark, Kafka, Iceberg, and beyond
• Own the design and delivery of core components — from pipeline architecture to ML model development, training, and deployment — including support for privacy-preserving, mission-critical infrastructure
• Drive reliability, performance, and efficiency improvements across your systems, including schema changes, backfills, and the experimentation and testing infrastructure (e.g. A/B testing) needed to validate them
• Apply a strong understanding of the intersection between business, analytics, and engineering, with a proactive focus on reusable, efficient solutions
• Use LLMs and AI coding agents (e.g. Claude, Gemini) daily to accelerate implementation, testing, and debugging — continually validating every result for correctness, privacy, and cost
• Collaborate with a team of world-class engineers and product managers; grow through code and design reviews, and mentor others as you gain seniority
• Contribute to on-call, monitoring, and continuous reliability and efficiency improvements; more senior engineers help lead incident response and root-cause analysis
• Work effectively in a rapidly changing, sprint-based Agile environment, and contribute to a culture that emphasizes reliability, resiliency, extensibility, scalability, and productivity. We are one team, nurturing each other's growth and supporting each other in delivering for our customers and Apple

What This Job Offers

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