Sr. Solutions Architect-Customer Systems

Apple•Austin, TX

About The Position

Do you have a passion for creating experiences that help people solve technology problems? At Apple, we're here to help our customers when they need support, and by joining our team, you'll help us evolve and expand the experiences we offer through our digital apps. We build carefully crafted apps and services which serve a critical need for our customers. The Digital team builds systems that power the cloud-based support apps and tools for Apple products used by millions of our world-wide customers everyday. As a Solutions Architect on this team, you will own system design across a highly distributed, customer-facing platform where availability, latency, and data privacy are key considerations. You will define architecture across cross-functional teams, drive alignment on technical strategy, and ensure that what we build is designed to scale globally, operate reliably under peak load, and delight customers at every touchpoint. We are looking for a highly motivated individual with strong technical skills to solve complex problems, who is passionate about quality, and has a keen eye for the details that surprise and delight our customers. You will champion your ideas with peers, management and other engineering groups. You will also enjoy the benefits of working in a fast growing business where you are encouraged to \"Think Different\" and where your efforts play a key role in the success of Apple's business. Our applications rely on a complex ecosystem supported by multiple engineering teams. You will be responsible for understanding the needs and changes across the ecosystem and building a strategic roadmap. To ensure alignment of your roadmap with the various engineering teams, you will partner with respective product owners to prioritize trade-offs, clarify requirements, and drive towards product goals. You will define technical solutions for business problems, define system interfaces and data flow across systems, write technical user stories, and advocate for end-user and business needs. You will drive architectural decisions for high-throughput, low-latency systems serving millions of simultaneous users, balancing reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency. You will define SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs in collaboration with engineering and operations teams, and lead design reviews focused on fault tolerance, graceful degradation, and observability at scale. You will facilitate effective communication between business and engineering teams to resolve issues, have extensive technical conversations with engineers and non-technical professionals, and present regularly in front of senior leaders.

Requirements

7+ years in software engineering with a focus on system design or technical architecture or solution architect with demonstrable experience on large-scale, customer-facing production systems
Experience designing and documenting engineering specifications for inter- and intra-system interactions, including API contracts, data flow diagrams, and interface definitions.
Experience designing and operating distributed systems at scale including strategies for high availability, fault tolerance, and horizontal scalability under variable traffic loads.
BS/MS in Computer Science or other technical field or equivalent experience.
Familiarity with modern backend stacks and data store technologies (e.g., Java/Go/Python, NoSQL/document stores such as MongoDB or Couchbase, relational databases)
10+ years in software engineering with a focus on system design or technical architecture or solution architect.
3+ years in hands-on development or technical architect roles.
Experience in understanding overall product requirements and breaking them down into technical components.
Ability to define interfaces and data flow across systems.

Responsibilities

Own system design across a highly distributed, customer-facing platform where availability, latency, and data privacy are key considerations.
Define architecture across cross-functional teams, drive alignment on technical strategy, and ensure that what we build is designed to scale globally, operate reliably under peak load, and delight customers at every touchpoint.
Champion ideas with peers, management and other engineering groups.
Understand the needs and changes across the ecosystem and build a strategic roadmap.
Partner with respective product owners to prioritize trade-offs, clarify requirements, and drive towards product goals.
Define technical solutions for business problems.
Define system interfaces and data flow across systems.
Write technical user stories.
Advocate for end-user and business needs.
Drive architectural decisions for high-throughput, low-latency systems serving millions of simultaneous users, balancing reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.
Define SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs in collaboration with engineering and operations teams.
Lead design reviews focused on fault tolerance, graceful degradation, and observability at scale.
Facilitate effective communication between business and engineering teams to resolve issues.
Have extensive technical conversations with engineers and non-technical professionals.
Present regularly in front of senior leaders.
Use data from various performance monitoring tools to analyze opportunities for improvement.