Staff/Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Search & Knowledge Platforms

The AI, Search & Knowledge Platforms team builds amazing products and services for Apple's customers while serving as a foundational partner to teams across Apple. The team delivers world-class AI, search, and knowledge systems powering Siri, Apple Intelligence, Safari, and iMessage, and operates the foundational platforms and infrastructure that keep these intelligent experiences running at hyperscale. As part of this group, you will focus on identifying and addressing opportunities to improve the quality and performance of the search and ranking stack that powers world knowledge question answering. This involves developing sophisticated machine learning systems, robust software heuristics, and large language models (LLMs) to understand user queries, retrieve and rank relevant documents, and provide users with direct answers that best satisfy their intent. You will work across the entire stack, applying a broad skill set that ranges from data science and opportunity analysis to ML system design, pipeline development, and quality evaluation.

Responsibilities

• Identify and address opportunities to improve the quality and performance of the search and ranking stack that powers world knowledge question answering.
• Understand product requirements and apply a keen product sense to design engineering solutions that directly reflect our product vision.
• Develop reliable, scalable ways to measure, assess, and compare the impact of different solutions on system quality and performance.
• Leverage a versatile skill set encompassing data science, opportunity analysis, ML system design, pipeline development, and quality evaluation.
• Navigate and contribute effectively to entirely new codebases and complex architectures.
• Communicate findings clearly to cross-functional teams and leadership, backing up recommendations with solid, rigorous data analysis.
• Learn quickly and adapt to the best technical approach for any given problem, seamlessly shifting between ML model training, software engineering, and prompt engineering.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• 6+ years experience in shipping Search and ML systems
• Strong programming skills in Python, Go or similar languages, with a solid foundation in software design, data structures, and algorithms.
• Experience building scalable data pipelines and backend systems, coupled with the ability to quickly navigate and contribute to large, complex, and unfamiliar codebases.
• Proficiency in data science methodologies, including A/B testing, statistical hypothesis testing and defining offline and online evaluation metrics for ML systems.
• Experience with prompt engineering
• Strong product sense with the ability to translate ambiguous product requirements into concrete engineering and modeling tasks.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to back up decisions with rigorous data analysis and present findings clearly to cross-functional partners.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's/Ph.D in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• 4+ years experience in shipping Search and ML systems
• Hands-on experience in Information Retrieval, Search Ranking, or Natural Language Processing (NLP).
• Demonstrated experience designing, building, or working with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures and applications.
• Familiarity with techniques for optimizing the inference performance, latency, and resource efficiency of LLMs and large machine learning systems in production environments (e.g., model quantization, caching, distributed inference).
• Experience with training and deploying machine learning models

Pay & Benefits
At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $184,700 and $324,800, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple's discretionary employee stock programs. Apple employees are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards, and can purchase Apple stock at a discount if voluntarily participating in Apple's Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You'll also receive benefits including: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and for formal education related to advancing your career at Apple, reimbursement for certain educational expenses including tuition. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary bonuses or commission payments as well as relocation. Learn more about Apple Benefits.

Note: Apple benefit, compensation and employee stock programs are subject to eligibility requirements and other terms of the applicable plan or program. Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant. At Apple, we believe accessibility is a fundamental human right. You'll find that idea reflected in everything here in our culture, our benefits and our digital tools. By welcoming as many perspectives as possible, we help you build a career where you feel like you belong. Learn about accessibility in Apple's workplace. Learn about reasonable accommodations for job applicants. Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.