Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Search & Platforms

Senior Machine Learning Engineer, Search & Knowledge Platforms

Seattle, Washington, United States Software and Services

Are you passionate about search technologies and building knowledge experiences? The Answers, Knowledge, and Information team is at the forefront of revolutionizing how hundreds of millions of people use their devices to obtain information. We are a world-class team of machine learning engineers who collaborate closely with product, data science, and infrastructure teams to power and enhance features across Apple products, including Siri, Spotlight, Safari, Messages, and more.

Our team operates in one of the most dynamic high-performance computing environments, managing petabytes of data and millions of queries per second. As a Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you play a critical role in developing world-class search and Q&A experiences for Apple customers using cutting-edge search technologies and large language models.

As a member of our dynamic team, you will have the unique and rewarding opportunity to contribute to the development of upcoming products from Apple. Our team is responsible for delivering next-generation Search and Question Answering systems across Apple products, including Siri, Safari, Spotlight, and more. Therefore, we are seeking candidates with a deep understanding of large-scale search technology, machine learning fundamentals, applied machine learning experience, and strong software engineering skills.

As Senior Machine Learning Engineer for the Search and Knowledge Quality team, you will be responsible for developing the ranking and retrieval technologies that power question answering and search across Apple products. In this role, you will collaborate with world-renowned experts in large-scale data management, machine learning systems, and knowledge extraction, driving advancements in question answering and search, as well as the underlying ranking and retrieval technologies.

This is your opportunity to shape how people obtain information by leveraging your Search and applied machine learning expertise, along with robust software engineering skills.

• Analyze search retrieval, ranking and relevance requirements, issues and opportunities
• Design, train, and deploy machine learning models to improve search relevance and ranking.
• Define evaluation metrics and benchmarks for search quality.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams including product, design, and data engineering.
• Find opportunity and partner with various product teams across the company to apply search technology to new product areas and use cases.

• Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
• 7+ years of industry or academia experience in machine learning, with a focus on search, NLP, or recommender systems
• Strong programming skills in C/C++ or Python, and experience with ML frameworks
• Proficient understanding of search algorithms and familiarity with evaluation metrics for search and information retrieval
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills

• Advanced degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field
• 5 years of industry or academia experience in machine learning, with a focus on search, NLP, or recommender systems
• Familiarity with NLP/ML tools and packages like Jax, Tensor Flow, PyTorch, etc.
• Experience working with transformer-based models (e.g., BERT, T5) in a search context
• Prior industry experience on large‑scale search systems
• Ability to quickly prototype ideas/solutions, perform critical analysis, and use creative approaches for solving complex problems

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 $171,600 and $258,100, 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…