Sr. Staff / Distinguished Engineer

Apple•Cupertino, CA

About The Position

This role owns the technical strategy and execution of Apple’s web-scale data acquisition platform. The platform crawls, stores, and delivers exabytes of web content and images that support Siri, Spotlight, Apple Maps, and Apple foundation models. The role spans the acquired-data lifecycle, including crawl strategy and prioritization, machine-learning-driven decisions about what to capture and how to value it, and scalable storage and compute architecture for downstream use. The engineer will set direction for efficient, broad, and precise data acquisition. Key challenges include designing storage and compute systems that enable engineering teams to work without being bottlenecked by data gravity, and applying machine learning to crawl selection, quality and relevance scoring, and decisions that adapt as the web and Apple’s models change. The role also shapes how downstream teams use acquired data for search ranking and AI model training. The position partners across crawl infrastructure, search indexing, and AI and foundation model teams to align architecture and machine-learning strategy with Apple’s broader AI direction. It requires independently navigating ambiguous, large-scale technical tradeoffs and serving as a trusted technical voice to senior leadership on platform direction, risk, and resourcing.

Requirements

12 or more years building and operating large-scale distributed systems, including petabyte- or exabyte-class storage, compute, or data pipelines.
Demonstrated experience applying machine learning in production to data quality, ranking, relevance, or prioritization problems.
Track record of setting technical direction across multiple teams as a senior lead.
Experience partnering with ML or AI research teams to translate model needs into infrastructure and data requirements.
B.S. in Computer Science; an M.S. or Ph.D. is preferred.

Nice To Haves

Experience with web crawling, search indexing, or large-scale content pipelines.
Familiarity with how training-data pipelines feed large language or foundation models.
History of mentoring senior engineers and influencing organization-level architecture decisions.
M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Responsibilities

Own technical strategy and execution for Apple’s web-scale data acquisition platform.
Set direction for how Apple acquires web data efficiently, broadly, and precisely.
Guide crawl strategy and prioritization, including machine-learning-driven decisions about what data to capture and how to value it.
Design scalable storage and compute architecture for acquired data.
Apply machine learning to decisions about what to crawl and how to score data quality and relevance, and evolve those decisions as the web and Apple’s models change.
Shape how downstream teams consume acquired data for search ranking and AI model training.
Partner with crawl infrastructure, search indexing, and AI and foundation model teams to align architecture and machine-learning strategy with Apple’s broader AI direction.
Navigate ambiguous, large-scale technical tradeoffs independently.
Advise senior leadership on technical direction, risk, and resourcing.
Set technical direction across multiple teams.
Mentor senior engineers and influence organization-level architecture decisions.