Senior Software Engineer - Routing Intelligence

Apple•Cupertino, CA

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 not just improving navigation. We're rethinking how hundreds of millions of people get where they need to go, every day. As a Software Engineer on the Maps Routing Engine team, you'll work at the heart of the system that decides, at scale, which path is best for each person, each journey, and each moment. You'll help us make routing smarter, more adaptable, and ultimately more personal, bringing a systems and machine learning perspective that complements the expertise of some of the best routing engineers in the industry. If you're passionate about solving hard technical problems, thrive in ambiguity, and want your work to shape how billions of people navigate the world, this is your opportunity to make a meaningful difference. The Maps Routing Engine team builds the backend services that power navigation for customers across Apple's devices. Our work spans every modality: driving, walking, cycling, and transit. As an engineer on our team, you'll work on new initiatives to make routing more intelligent and more personal, while maintaining Apple's privacy-first approach. You'll work deep inside the routing engine, contributing to components like pathfinding and route ranking, applying machine learning to improve how routes are selected, and developing richer representations of the physical world so our engine can reason about routes the way a knowledgeable local would. We have a modern development process, analyzing requirements, implementing and experimenting iteratively, and optimizing solutions to deliver exceptional experiences. We support production systems serving billions 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 6+ years industry experience building large-scale, production-grade applications and services
Ability to write complex, highly-performant, clean, and maintainable solutions, preferably in C++ or Swift
Solid understanding of algorithms and data structures
Experience with using AI/ML to solve complex technical problems
Strong problem-solving skills and comfort working with ambiguity and evolving requirements
Ability to collaborate effectively in a multi-functional team environment
Good interpersonal and communication skills, possessing the ability to work both independently and in a distributed team environment

Nice To Haves

Experience with ML techniques applied to ranking, recommendation, or geospatial and navigation domains
Familiarity with routing, graph algorithms, or travel time estimation, or eagerness to develop that knowledge working alongside domain experts
Familiarity with privacy-preserving approaches to ML and data processing
Experience writing Python tools for data exploration, prototyping, or pipeline development
Familiarity with macOS or Linux development environments
Experience with data pipelines, scalable data architectures, or cloud-native infrastructure (for example, Spark, Kafka, Flink, Kubernetes)

Responsibilities

Work at the heart of the system that decides, at scale, which path is best for each person, each journey, and each moment.
Make routing smarter, more adaptable, and ultimately more personal.
Bring a systems and machine learning perspective.
Build backend services that power navigation for customers across Apple's devices.
Work on new initiatives to make routing more intelligent and more personal, while maintaining Apple's privacy-first approach.
Work deep inside the routing engine, contributing to components like pathfinding and route ranking.
Apply machine learning to improve how routes are selected.
Develop richer representations of the physical world so our engine can reason about routes the way a knowledgeable local would.
Analyze requirements, implement and experiment iteratively, and optimize solutions to deliver exceptional experiences.
Support production systems serving billions of requests daily.
Provide occasional support outside standard business hours for on-call duties and critical project needs.