Principal Applied Research Engineer/Scientist

Apple • Cupertino, CA

74d

About The Position

Our team is seeking adept machine learning scientists and engineers to build cutting-edge AI-driven products at Apple. This role focuses on full-stack ML development, from prototyping to production implementation, working closely with hardware, software, and design teams across the company. You'll be joining a select group of accomplished professionals who have made significant contributions to cutting-edge LLM projects in a collaborative environment that fosters innovation and pushes the boundaries of AI and machine learning. Your work will have far-reaching impact, influencing key strategic decisions and setting precedents for how AI technologies are integrated across our product ecosystem. In this role, you will be responsible for the entire ML development lifecycle, working with cross-functional teams to bring innovative AI technologies into reality. You'll design high-performance ML models, create and influence ML tooling and infrastructure, drive evaluation efforts, and implement model inference solutions. The team values rapid iteration, based on bringing models into reality so stakeholders can understand cutting-edge technology and research. You'll collaborate with hardware, software, and design teams across Apple, both representing the technology and implementing complete engineering solutions ready for product development. This unique opportunity places you at the forefront of innovation, working on projects that have the potential to redefine user experiences and technological capabilities at a company-wide level. Each team member brings unique expertise from their work on transformative industry projects, contributing to an environment that consistently pushes the boundaries of what's possible with AI and machine learning.

Requirements

• Deep technical expertise in transformer-based large language models (LLMs) and multi-modal foundation models that integrate text, visual, and audio encoders with cross-modal attention mechanisms
• Experience across areas such as pre-training, fine-tuning, performance optimization, and safety alignment
• Expertise in designing and implementing AI agents capable of complex reasoning, task planning, and autonomous decision-making in diverse environments
• Forward-thinking creativity and curiosity about shaping AI capabilities into compelling product experiences that deliver genuine user value
• Demonstrated ability to influence modeling architecture decisions and translate research innovations into practical, product-ready implementations
• Strong collaborative skills with experience effectively communicating and advocating for novel research directions to product-oriented leadership

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and implement production-ready ML models and infrastructure in partnership with designers, software/hardware engineers, and applied R&D teams
• Drive data generation, curation, and evaluation efforts for ML systems
• Develop and optimize model inference solutions
• Rapidly prototype AI solutions that solve real-world problems
• Communicate and advocate for novel research directions to product-oriented leadership
• Influence modeling architecture decisions and translate research innovations into practical implementations
• Engage with diverse teams across Apple to represent AI technology and implement it into prototypes

What This Job Offers

• Industry: Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees