Principal Engineer - Intelligent Navigation Experiences

Apple • Cupertino, CA

18d

About The Position

Join Apple and be part of a community where innovation thrives, creativity
flourishes, and diverse perspectives are celebrated. At Apple Maps, we're
revolutionizing how navigation integrates seamlessly into people's lives.
Picture your work influencing smarter, more intuitive experiences for billions
of users around the globe. As a Principal Engineer on the Maps Navigation and
Location Services team, you'll help shape the next generation of intelligent
navigation experiences. Your work will span critical services that power
navigation and location understanding for customers using Apple devices—from
iPhone and iPad to Watch, Mac, and CarPlay. You'll tackle complex technical
challenges at the intersection of large-scale backend systems,
privacy-preserving machine learning, and location intelligence. If you're
passionate about building impactful, user-centered experiences at scale, thrive
in ambiguity, and want to define the future of intelligent navigation, this is
your opportunity to make a meaningful difference.

The Maps Navigation and Location Services team builds the backend services that
power navigation and location understanding for customers across Apple's
devices. Our navigation work spans multiple modalities—from driving and walking
to cycling and transit—each presenting unique technical challenges. As an
engineer on our team, you'll work on new initiatives to make navigation more
intelligent while maintaining Apple's privacy-first approach. You'll design and
build scalable backend services and APIs that leverage machine learning to
enhance navigation experiences. This role requires someone comfortable driving
clarity from ambiguity, defining requirements, and collaborating
cross-functionally to align product vision with technical execution. We have a
modern development process—analyzing requirements, implementing and
experimenting iteratively, and optimizing solutions to deliver exceptional
experiences. We support production systems serving millions of requests daily, so occasional support outside standard business hours may be required for
on-call duties and critical project needs.

Requirements

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field with 12+ years of industry experience
• Strong experience building large-scale, production-grade applications, services, and customer-facing features for millions of users.
• Proficiency in modern programming languages such as C++, Java, Scala, Swift, or Rust
• Solid understanding of algorithms, data structures, and distributed system design
• Proven ability to lead technical initiatives, mentor engineers, and work effectively in ambiguous, cross-functional environments

Nice To Haves

• MS or PhD in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field
• Experience with machine learning techniques in navigation, location services, or geospatial domains
• Familiarity with privacy-preserving ML approaches and on-device model deployment
• Hands-on experience with scalable data architectures and streaming technologies (e.g., Spark, Kafka, Flink)
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and containerization (e.g., AWS, Kubernetes)

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees