Technical Operations & Site Reliability Engineer, Customer Systems

Technical Operations & Site Reliability Engineer, Customer Systems

Sunnyvale, California, United States Software and Services

At Apple, Customer Experience is at the forefront of everything we do. The Customer Systems Operations team is looking for a highly skilled and motivated Tech Ops Engineer (Technical Operations & Site Reliability) to join us. The team is responsible for maintaining the reliability, availability, and performance of business‑critical, globally distributed systems.

If you have the desire and motivation to design and develop automation solutions to streamline system sustenance, monitoring, and operational workflows, while collaborating closely with support, engineering and business operations teams, this profile is for you. Ideal candidates will combine a passion for operational excellence with strong software engineering skills, and thrive in a fast‑paced, change‑driven environment focused on continuous improvement and flawless delivery.

Responsibilities include managing large‑scale production outages, leading incident response and improving efficiency; designing, building and maintaining automation solutions to streamline the monitoring, sustenance, and management of large‑scale distributed systems; developing tools and software (using Java/JEE, REST, Swift/Objective‑C, Python, Go, or Bash) to automate repetitive operational tasks and improve system reliability; utilizing AI & LLM models to achieve operational excellence in application support;

planning and executing actionable system health monitoring, incident response, and communication across critical global applications; driving operational metrics and KPI identification and alignment; partnering with multi‑functional teams to improve reliability, efficiency, stability, and processes; acting as a self‑directed problem‑solver to handle multiple simultaneous competing priorities and deliver solutions in a timely manner; creating and maintaining accurate, up‑to‑date documentation reflecting architecture, infrastructure configuration, and procedures;

writing status and incident reports; writing training material and training users in complex topics; guiding a team of highly skilled engineers across the globe towards operational excellence; and building a culture where regional members cultivate strong in‑region relationships and keep business partners informed about significant incidents and problems.

• Experience in interpreting operational data from systems like Hubble, Extra Hop, Splunk or other monitoring tools, along with hands‑on experience of production monitoring systems, log analysis, troubleshooting, and support dashboards.
• B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or similar, or equivalent related work experience.
• Understanding of standard networking protocols and components such as HTTP, DNS, TCP/IP, ICMP, the OSI model, subnetting and load balancing.
• Experience in using AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to enhance operational efficiency through tasks such as model training, optimization (including areas like Model Context Protocol or similar methods), and designing effective model utilities.
• Experience in scripting languages and automation tools such as Java, JEE, REST, Swift/Objective‑C, database schema design and data access technologies.

• Experience in strategizing and achieving operational excellence in globally distributed systems.
• Fundamental understanding of distributed systems including microservices, messaging brokers, and versioning.
• Experience driving operations teams for large‑scale mission‑critical applications working in a 24x7 environment across multiple locations.
• Understanding of the Linux operating system, including kernel, memory, process, threads, static/shared libraries, IPC, and signals.
• Excellent organizational and documentation skills.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, proactive, with a strong sense of personal ownership.

Base pay for this role is between $150,400 and $277,600, depending on skills, qualifications, experience, and location. Apple employees also have the opportunity to become shareholders through…