Machine Learning Engineer

Overview

The Visual eXperience team is looking for a passionate researcher/engineer to help shape the next generation of imaging, rendering, compression, and display solutions for products across the Apple ecosystem. The team features a highly collaborative and hands-on environment that fosters scientific and engineering excellence, creativity, and innovation in the interdisciplinary areas of vision science, information theory, compression, machine learning, image enhancement and processing, neuroscience, color science, and optics.

This engineer will explore the foundations of perception-aligned loss functions, neural compression systems, and image realism modeling that enable breakthrough performance in our camera, AR/VR, display, and video processing pipelines. You will join a team of scientists and engineers who care deeply about elegant theory, robust implementation, and real-world impact that makes a tangible difference to our user’s experience. If you are excited by the intersection of information theory, perception, machine learning, and large-scale imaging systems—and want your work to ship in products used by millions—this role is for you.

• Create and advance perception-aligned measures of image distortion, and integrate them into training pipelines for neural compressors and other cutting edge learned image processing algorithms
• Collaborate with partners to develop algorithms trained by these next-generation perceptual loss functions, such as learned image and texture compression models that optimize for realism, fidelity, and rate efficiency
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams—including sensor architecture, ISP/SoC design, display HW, Vision Science, and applied ML groups—to bring research ideas into production
• Perform detailed experimentation to evaluate model fidelity to perception and to evaluate optimization performance for different image processing algorithms
• Prototype and validate new algorithms that meaningfully push rate–distortion–realism boundaries beyond state-of-the-art
• You will join a world-class organization of researchers and engineers who value creativity, rigor, and beautiful solutions to hard problems.

• Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Neuroscience, Vision Science, or equivalent and 3+ years of relevant experience
• Experience in translating complex mathematical concepts into practical algorithms aligned with perceived image realism or quality
• Experience with full-reference or no-reference image metrics, generative modeling, optimization, or realism-driven evaluation frameworks

• Masters or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Neuroscience, Vision Science, or equivalent
• Experience in information theory, probabilistic modeling, and/or machine learning
• Experience in Python and modern ML frameworks such as PyTorch, Tensor Flow, and JAX
• Deep expertise in image compression, texture modeling, and rate-distortion optimization, with demonstrated ability to design new metrics and algorithms that outperform classical approaches
• Publication record in machine learning, compression, or information theory venues (NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, ISIT, or related)
• Hands-on experience building learned compression systems end-to-end, including model design, training pipelines, ablations, and integration into large-scale frameworks
• Internship or industry experience integrating research models into production-scale frameworks is a strong plus
• Basic knowledge of human visual perception is a strong plus
• Strong analytical & critical thinking, and creative problem-solving skills
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and scientific writing skills
• Basic understanding of digital imaging, and display software and hardware
• Swift/Metal programming is a plus

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 $147,400 and $272,100, and your…