Apple Data Platform SRE - Engineering Manager

Apple•Austin, TX

About The Position

Apple Service Engineering (ASE) builds and scales platforms and infrastructure that support Apple services, including iCloud, iTunes, Siri, and Maps. The Site Reliability Engineering Manager will provide technical leadership and build a high-performing SRE team responsible for the reliability of Apple Data Platform managed services. The role champions SRE and software engineering best practices, release engineering, and data-driven decision-making, while ensuring reliability and resiliency are incorporated throughout the system lifecycle, from design and development through deployment and operations. The manager will help services meet demanding availability, latency, resilience, and security requirements and drive ongoing improvements in operational maturity. The position partners with product engineering to define and execute the reliability engineering vision, strategy, and roadmap. It leads reliability initiatives and operational execution, establishes and owns SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets, and uses metrics and observability to guide engineering decisions. The manager promotes automation and operational efficiency, develops engineers through coaching and performance feedback, supports recruiting, and advocates for reliability across product and platform teams. Production on-call and incident management are part of the role.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software engineering, systems engineering, or infrastructure engineering.
3+ years of experience in a management role focused on leading, hiring, developing, and building teams.
Ability to contribute to architectural decisions and align engineering execution with product and business needs.
Hands-on experience with reliability engineering, SRE, or large-scale production operations.
Practical experience with Python, Golang, and/or Java.
Knowledge of the Linux operating system, containers and virtualization, standard networking protocols, and related components.
Understanding of SRE principles, including monitoring, alerting, error budgets, fault analysis, and other common reliability engineering concepts.
Experience with cloud computing technologies, particularly Kubernetes.
Ability to lead cross-functional collaboration and influence technical decisions across teams.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Experience defining and operating SLO-based reliability and resiliency programs.
Strong knowledge of observability systems, including metrics, logging, and tracing, and qualification engineering.
Proficiency in the architecture, deployment, performance tuning, and troubleshooting of open-source data analytics and processing technologies, especially Apache Spark, Flink, Trino, Druid, and/or related software.
Working experience with AI, Large Language Models, and other efficiency or automation tools.

Responsibilities

Build, scale, and mentor a high-performing SRE team that champions SRE and software engineering best practices, release engineering, and data-driven decision-making.
Partner with product engineering to define and execute the reliability engineering vision, strategy, and roadmap for Apple Data Platform managed services.
Lead day-to-day reliability initiatives, including sprint planning, prioritization, and retrospectives focused on operational outcomes.
Establish and own SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets, using metrics and observability to guide engineering trade-offs and reliability investments.
Promote automation and operational efficiency through tooling, testing, deployment pipelines, and self-healing systems.
Mentor and develop engineers through regular one-on-ones, career planning, and performance feedback.
Communicate and present ideas, deliverables, and team needs to ASE leadership.
Collaborate with recruiting to attract and hire reliability engineering talent.
Advocate for reliability, resilience, and operational excellence across product and platform teams.
Participate in production on-call and incident management.
Help embed reliability and resiliency across the system lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and operations.
Drive long-term reliability improvements, learn from failures, and help prevent outages.