Forward Deployed Engineer

Cupertino, California, United States Sales and Business Development

Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming outstanding products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Bring passion and dedication to your job, and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Apple's Sales organization generates the revenue needed to fuel our ongoing development of products and services. This, in turn, enriches the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. We are, in many ways, the face of Apple to our largest customers. Apple's US Decision Intelligence (DI) team is looking for a talented individual who is passionate about crafting, implementing, and operating AI solutions that have a direct and measurable impact on Apple Sales and its customers.

Description

We're looking for a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) who thrives at the intersection of business and engineering - someone who can sit shoulder-to-shoulder with Sales teams, translate ambiguous business problems into shippable code, and bring those learnings back to shape the roadmap of our internal AI-driven insight platform. This role is the connective tissue between Sales, our data science team, Product Management, and the software and AI engineers building the platform. You will spend your time roughly evenly between embedded user engagement and hands‑on engineering, building prototypes that solve real Sales problems today and influencing what becomes a first-class platform capability tomorrow.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the primary technical bridge between Sales teams and the product and engineering organization, translating frontline business problems into engineering specifications and shippable solutions.
• Embed directly with Sales teams to understand their workflows, gather actionable signal on platform gaps, and become the trusted technical partner they reach for first.
• Build prototypes, demos, and reference implementations on top of the platform that solve concrete Sales problems quickly, then distill the most valuable patterns into reusable abstractions that scale our speed and quality of delivery - partnering with Product and Engineering to graduate them into first-class platform features.
• Partner closely with the data science team to operationalize novel models, scoring algorithms, and analytical workflows into scalable, production-grade services.
• Partner with the software and AI engineering teams to integrate Sales-facing solutions with platform APIs, SDKs, and shared services - championing the shift from one-off consulting work to self-service adoption.
• Act as the voice of the user - funnel deep, structured insights on API quality, developer experience, and unmet needs back to Product Management and Engineering leadership to inform roadmap timing and prioritization.
• Build internal community around the platform: author tutorials, onboarding materials, and demos that help Sales users and partner engineers get the most out of it.
• Partner with Data Science, Software and AI Engineering, and Product Management to connect high-level strategy to day-to-day execution, aligning teams without direct authority.
• Communicate status, trade-offs, and outcomes clearly to business partners, engineering teams, and leadership across the full lifecycle of every engagement.

Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in Forward Deployed Engineering, Solutions Architecture, full-stack product engineering, or a related highly technical, cross-functional role.
• Demonstrated customer obsession and product thinking - ability to act as a technical partner to internal customers and translate vague requirements into concrete engineering specifications.
• Familiarity with SQL and relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, Snowflake) and the ability to navigate analytics workflows and data pipelines.
• Functional literacy in AI/ML concepts - you understand the lifecycle of LLM-powered systems (prompts, retrieval, evaluation, inference) and can discuss the engineering trade-offs involved.
• Demonstrated experience partnering with applied scientists, data scientists, or researchers - you can navigate the ambiguity of research-style workflows and operationalize prototype code into production-grade services.
• Working knowledge of REST APIs, GraphQL, microservices, and distributed systems architectures.
• Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Claude Code) to accelerate prototyping, code generation, and documentation, and able to critically review and validate AI-generated output before it ships.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to represent the platform to executive leadership, partner teams, frontline Sales users, and the broader engineering community.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate extreme ambiguity, define roadmaps where none existed, and influence without direct authority.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic, constantly evolving business environment.
• B.S. degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting Sales, Operations, and Finance stakeholders, and a track record of translating commercial workflows into software.
• Hands‑on experience building or integrating LLM-powered or agentic AI applications, including prompt design, retrieval pipelines, and evaluation harnesses.
• Familiarity with data science tooling such as Dataiku, Snowflake, Airflow, or Python-based analytics pipelines.
• Experience with full-stack web frameworks, including Node.js/Express.js, Apollo GraphQL, and React or similar frontend technologies.
• Experience designing tools, SDKs, or APIs with self‑service adoption as a first-class constraint - championing the transition from a consulting model to a self‑service model.
• Hands‑on experience with containerized environments using Docker and Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with observability and tracing tools such as Langfuse, PagerDuty, or equivalent LLM call tracing platforms.
• Comfortable shipping prototype code that may be replaced by platform features as patterns mature.
• A background in bridging research-heavy environments with production engineering teams.
• Advanced Degree (MS) in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field is preferred.

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 $216,200 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.

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Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.