Senior Real-Time Ad Systems Engineer

Cupertino, California, United States Software and Services

Apple is where we use the power of technology to enrich people's lives. Every new product we build, service we create, or Apple Store experience we deliver is the result of us making each other's ideas stronger. That happens because every one of us shares a belief that we can make something wonderful and share it with the world, changing lives for the better. It's the diversity of our people and their thinking that inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do. When we bring everybody in, we can do the best work of our lives. Here, you'll do more than join something — you'll add something.Join the Apple Ads Engineering team and help build an advertising platform that benefits both customers and advertisers. Our technology makes advertising possible on the App Store, Apple News, Stocks, and Apple TV — helping people discover content, supporting creators and publishers, and connecting advertisers of all sizes with engaged audiences, all with the unwavering commitment to privacy you expect from Apple. In this role, you will design, develop, and launch the highly-performant, internet-scale backend systems that select and deliver the right ads in real time, collaborating across engineering, product, and infrastructure to bring elegant solutions into production at Apple scale.

Description

You will design, develop, and operate the distributed services that make real-time ad selection possible at Apple. You will architect and build low-latency, high-availability, high-throughput ad-serving systems in a cloud environment, engineer secure and scalable data processing pipelines that operate on petabyte-scale datasets, and implement performant services that handle very high data volumes and QPS. You will work cross-functionally to ensure that optimal and correct ads are available for real-time selection, and that observability and flexibility are provided for stakeholders. While this role focuses on the candidate retrieval part of Apple Ads, we are not constrained by organization structure and offer the flexibility to contribute across a variety of backend systems, including opportunities to apply algorithmic search, machine learning, NLP, and AI to hard retrieval problems. You will write clean, efficient, well-documented code, participate in code reviews, and mentor other engineers on the team. Collaboration with internal partners across indexing, search, serving, operations, and program management to define requirements and deliver high-quality solutions is essential. You should be passionate about building products that protect user privacy and thrive in a fast-paced environment with rapidly changing priorities — and have fun doing it.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and implement internet-scale, low-latency, highly-available ad-serving systems in a cloud environment.
• Build performant micro-services and distributed data platforms that support high data volumes and QPS.
• Engineer secure, scalable distributed data processing pipelines capable of processing petabyte-scale datasets for indexing and retrieval.
• Apply techniques from algorithmic search, machine learning, natural language processing, and AI to advance candidate retrieval and ranking.
• Collaborate with multiple internal teams to support indexing and searching use cases across the organization.
• Partner with product managers, operations, SREs, and fellow engineers to define requirements and deliver end-to-end systems.
• Work effectively both independently and as part of a team to deliver complete systems from design through production.
• Write clean, efficient, well-documented code and participates in code reviews.
• Debug and resolve complex issues across large-scale distributed systems.
• Mentor other engineers and contribute to engineering best practices.
• Stay current with advances in search, retrieval, distributed systems, ML/AI, and cloud infrastructure, and contribute ideas that improve the platform.

Minimum Qualifications

• 6+ years of industry experience architecting and developing internet-scale server software for Linux systems, including scalable micro-services or data-driven platforms.
• Strong background in computer science fundamentals, including algorithms and data structures.
• Strong coding skills in Go, Java, Rust, C++, Scala, or a similar OOP/Functional language.
• Hands-on experience designing and operating scalable micro-services.
• Experience with search technologies such as Lucene, Solr, or Elasticsearch. Expertise with NoSQL datastores (e.g., Cassandra).
• Proficiency with data processing technologies (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink) and methods for processing petabyte-scale datasets.
• Experience with AWS services such as Amazon S3, EC2, and EKS/Kubernetes. Strong problem-solving and debugging skills.
• Demonstrated ability to work on complex problems and systems, alone or as part of a team, to deliver complete systems end to end.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to work effectively with technical and non-technical cross-functional teams, including operations and project management partners.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• Experience creating groundbreaking technology for algorithmic search, machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence.
• Experience building ad-serving, recommendation, or large-scale retrieval systems.
• Familiarity with real-time bidding, candidate retrieval, or ranking pipelines.
• Experience operating services with strict latency and availability SLOs.
• Familiarity with privacy-preserving system design and data-handling practices.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems fundamentals — consensus, replication, and fault tolerance.
• A desire to work in a fast-paced and challenging environment, and a fast learner with strong motivation for growing and learning new technologies.

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 $184,700 and $324,800, 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. Learn more about Apple Benefits

Note: Apple benefit, compensation and employee stock programs are subject to eligibility requirements and other terms of the applicable plan or program.

Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant

At Apple, we believe accessibility is a fundamental human right. You’ll find that idea reflected in everything here — in our culture, our benefits and our digital tools. By welcoming as many perspectives as possible, we help you build a career where you feel like you belong.

Learn about accessibility in Apple’s workplace

Learn about reasonable accommodations for job applicants

Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.

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