Evaluation Science Lead

Apple • Cupertino, CA

5d • Onsite

About The Position

The people here at Apple don’t just create products — they create the kind of wonder that’s revolutionized entire industries. It’s the diversity of those people and their ideas that inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do. Join Apple, and help us leave the world better than we found it. We are looking for an Evaluation Science Lead to define how our multilingual Globalization AI solutions are measured and validated across Apple Services — including Apple Music, App Store, Apple TV+, Apple Podcasts, and more. This is a rare opportunity to build evaluation science as a discipline at the intersection of language, culture, and AI, and to directly shape whether hundreds of millions of users around the world feel genuinely at home in Apple's products.

Language carries culture, nuance, and context — as Evaluation Science Lead, you will own the scientific rigor behind measuring how our AI-powered Globalization solutions perform across 50+ languages and dozens of markets. As a strategic individual contributor on the Globalization Quality and Operations team, you will design statistically grounded evaluation frameworks combining human judgment with scalable automation — partnering with Engineering, AI Strategy, and Production to turn evaluation into a strategic capability. This role requires strong analytical and scientific thinking, hands-on execution, and sound judgment to communicate complex findings clearly. You thrive in ambiguity and know evaluation delivers value only when operationalized — if you believe rigorous, culturally-informed evaluation is one of the highest-leverage ways to improve AI language quality globally, this role was built for you.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in evaluation science, data science, or ML systems development, with demonstrated experience owning evaluation systems at scale end-to-end
• Experience applying statistical methodology — sampling, significance testing, and confidence intervals
• Practical understanding of measurement validity principles
• Hands-on experience measuring annotator agreement, diagnosing divergence, and improving annotation protocols
• Proficiency with statistical tools and languages (R, Python, SQL) for analysis and reproducibility
• Experience designing evaluation frameworks adopted and scaled by operational teams
• Strong written and verbal communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences
• Direct experience handling sensitive and confidential information with integrity and discretion
• Ability to be onsite; this role is an in-person, onsite position
• Availability to work occasional evenings and weekends, as business needs require
• Up to 10% + travel; both domestic and international

Nice To Haves

• Master’s, PhD, or comparable experience in Statistics, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, Psychometrics, Data Science, or related quantitative field.
• Experience evaluating generative AI systems—including hallucination detection, safety and cultural alignment, autograders / LLM-as-judge systems, benchmark design, and synthetic data evaluation.
• Experience with A/B testing, causal inference, or experimental design
• Experience in applied linguistics — translating cultural and linguistic nuances into quantitative evaluation framework

Responsibilities

• Own the scientific rigor behind measuring how AI-powered Globalization solutions perform across 50+ languages and dozens of markets.
• Design statistically grounded evaluation frameworks combining human judgment with scalable automation.
• Partner with Engineering, AI Strategy, and Production to turn evaluation into a strategic capability.
• Communicate complex findings clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.

What This Job Offers

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