Design Engineer — App Store & Games Product Design Team

Apple•Cupertino, CA

16h

About The Position

The App Store & Games Product Design Team is responsible for the customer experience across the App Store, Apple Arcade and Apple Games, serving hundreds of millions of people every day on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Watch, Vision Pro and the web. Our team of designers and researchers design and ship product experiences at a global scale. We are seeking an exceptional Design Engineer who operates confidently at the intersection of design craft and software engineering. You will join us at a pivotal moment. AI-assisted development has fundamentally changed what our team can build and how fast we can build it. This is a new kind of role for our team: a deeply technical builder embedded within our design organization, responsible for the engineering infrastructure, tooling, and workflows that enable our designers to build and ship production-quality prototypes. You will work alongside technically-minded designers who will be your closest collaborators, and define how our team works with code. Our team has moved beyond static specs and documentation. We build functional, code-based prototypes in Swift and web technologies, and in some cases our prototypes are adopted directly into shipping builds. We are looking for an engineer who can scale these practices, maintain what we build, and establish robust infrastructure for collaboration, distribution, and handover. This role spans two technical domains: web-based tooling and backend experiences that power native Swift/iOS front ends, and native iOS/macOS prototype work in Swift and SwiftUI. You will be expected to operate confidently across both. You will architect and structure code projects so that designers can contribute effectively. You will manage version control and collaboration workflows, distribute prototypes through TestFlight and internal platforms, and ensure that what we build is maintainable, well-organized, and ready for engineering adoption. You will take working prototypes and elevate them from proof-of-concept to structured, distributable artifacts that production teams can integrate with confidence. While this role sits within the design organization, you will work in close partnership with our engineering teams — facilitating handover, aligning on technical standards, and in some cases contributing directly to production repositories. You will stay at the frontier of AI-assisted development, evaluating new tools and helping the team maintain its technical edge. This is a senior, independent role. You will have significant autonomy to define technical standards, establish workflows, and shape the future of how design and engineering collaborate across our products.

Requirements

5+ years of software engineering experience.
Strong proficiency in iOS/macOS development (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit).
Equally strong proficiency with web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React or similar).
Strong proficiency with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and developer infrastructure including TestFlight, code signing, and build distribution.
Experience architecting codebases for collaboration — establishing patterns, documentation, and structure that enable others to build on top of your work.
Experience integrating with APIs, backend services, and data pipelines.
Demonstrated fluency with AI-assisted development tools, with a clear perspective on how these tools are changing engineering workflows.
Excellent communication skills and the ability to translate between design and engineering contexts with clarity.
Experience working within or closely alongside design teams, with a genuine appreciation for design craft, visual quality, and interaction detail.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Core Animation, Core Graphics, Metal, or advanced motion and animation frameworks.
Familiarity with machine learning pipelines, personalization systems, or recommendation engines, and the ability to interface with these systems to improve user-facing experiences.
Experience setting up and managing internal tools, developer platforms, or prototype distribution systems.
Previous experience mentoring or enabling non-engineers in technical workflows.
Experience working in environments where design and engineering boundaries are intentionally blurred.
Familiarity with spec-driven development practices.
A deep understanding of the Apple design aesthetic, Human Interface Guidelines, and platform conventions.

Responsibilities

Scale practices for building functional, code-based prototypes in Swift and web technologies.
Maintain existing prototype infrastructure.
Establish robust infrastructure for collaboration, distribution, and handover of prototypes.
Architect and structure code projects to enable effective designer contribution.
Manage version control and collaboration workflows.
Distribute prototypes through TestFlight and internal platforms.
Ensure prototype code is maintainable, well-organized, and ready for engineering adoption.
Elevate working prototypes from proof-of-concept to structured, distributable artifacts.
Facilitate handover to production engineering teams.
Align on technical standards with engineering teams.
Contribute directly to production repositories in some cases.
Stay at the frontier of AI-assisted development, evaluating new tools.
Define technical standards, establish workflows, and shape the future of design and engineering collaboration.