Engineering Manager, Data Protection - FoundationDB

At Apple, iCloud and Apple Services Engineering (ASE) build and operate the platforms that power critical customer experiences across a globally distributed ecosystem. iCloud's FoundationDB team is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead data protection systems for one of the most advanced distributed databases in production today. FoundationDB powers Apple's most critical cloud services, and this role is central to ensuring data durability, integrity, availability, and cost-efficient storage at massive scale.

This role focuses on building and evolving FoundationDB's data protection capabilities, including fast backup and restore, change-data-capture, tiered storage systems, and client-facing APIs. You will lead efforts to create highly available backup systems that can also serve as active replicas for online workloads, significantly improving availability and storage efficiency. This work sits at the intersection of database internals, storage engines, and distributed execution.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow an engineering team responsible for FoundationDB backup, restore, and data protection systems.
• Design and implement scalable, highly available backup and restore architectures.
• Drive development of tiered storage systems and CDC pipelines that support both recovery and online use.
• Ensure strong data integrity guarantees across transactional and replicated systems.
• Partner with core database, storage, and client teams to integrate data protection seamlessly into FoundationDB.
• Improve performance, reliability, and cost efficiency of large-scale backup storage systems.
• Set technical direction while maintaining high engineering quality and operational rigor.

Minimum Qualifications

• 3+ years of people management experience leading software engineering teams.
• Strong background in distributed systems and storage technologies.
• Experience with backup, restore, or replicated storage systems at scale.
• Experience directly supporting or owning online production systems or customer-deployed production systems.
• Solid understanding of transactional systems and data integrity principles.
• Experience working with RocksDB or similar storage engines.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to lead complex technical initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing or operating large-scale backup and recovery systems.
• Familiarity with change-data-capture and data replication pipelines.
• Experience with parallel task execution, scheduling, or distributed workflows.
• Background in database internals or storage engine development.
• Experience balancing reliability, performance, and cost in production systems.

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 $228,100 and $342,800, 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.