Senior Software Engineer - Data

Cupertino, California, United States Software and Services

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Data Engineering Infrastructure team, which builds and operates the foundational platforms that power data ingestion, transformation, and analytics across the organization. You will design and develop high-performance, reliable, and scalable systems that enable data engineers, analysts, and ML practitioners to move, process, and govern data efficiently and securely.

As a Senior Software Engineer in the Data Engineering Infrastructure team, you will design and build distributed systems and frameworks that automate the lifecycle of data — from ingestion to transformation to serving. You’ll work at the intersection of software engineering, distributed data processing, and cloud infrastructure, helping to define the standards, abstractions, and tools that enable our data platform to operate  will collaborate closely with teams across data engineering, analytics, ML, and platform engineering to deliver resilient infrastructure components such as data ingestion pipelines, metadata and schema management services, workflow orchestration, and monitoring frameworks.

This is a hands‑on role where you will influence architecture, write production‑grade code, and drive engineering excellence across the data platform.

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data infrastructure and frameworks supporting batch and streaming workloads.
• Develop common services for data ingestion, schema evolution, metadata management, and data quality enforcement.
• Implement automation for data pipeline deployment, monitoring, and governance.
• Collaborate with data engineers and platform teams to define APIs, SDKs, and libraries that make developing data applications simpler and safer.
• Improve performance, reliability, and observability of data pipelines and platform components.
• Participate in architecture reviews, code reviews, and technical design discussions.
• Drive adoption of best practices in distributed systems, storage formats (Parquet, Iceberg), and data access layers.
• Contribute to capacity planning, cost optimization, and operational excellence in cloud and on‑prem environments.
• Mentor junior engineers and contribute to the overall technical strategy and roadmap for the data platform.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with at least 3 years focused on data systems or platform infrastructure.
• Strong programming skills in Java, Python;
  Scala - nice to have.
• Hands‑on experience with distributed data frameworks such as Spark, Flink, or Kafka.
• Solid understanding of data modeling, storage formats (Parquet/Avro/ORC), and partitioning strategies.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, container orchestration (Kubernetes), and infrastructure‑as‑code tools (Terraform, Cloud Formation).
• Experience working with cloud‑based data platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure).
• Excellent problem‑solving, debugging, and communication skills.

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related field.
• Experience building data infrastructure frameworks, SDKs, or shared libraries used by multiple data teams.
• Expertise in Apache Spark internals, Flink stateful streaming, or Kafka Connect ecosystems.
• Familiarity with data governance, cataloging, and schema management systems (e.g., Hive Metastore, Glue, Iceberg, Delta Lake).
• Experience with Airflow, or other workflow orchestration tools.
• Prior exposure to observability stacks (Prometheus, Open Telemetry, Splunk) for monitoring distributed jobs.
• Proven track record of leading design discussions, mentoring engineers, and driving cross‑team technical initiatives.

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 $181,100 and $318,400, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Apple employees also have the…