Senior Data Scientist - Special Projects

Senior Data Scientist - Special Projects

Apple's intelligent systems generate rich, multi-modal data from devices, sensors, software, and services. We're looking for a data scientist who can bring clarity to this complexity — someone who can analyze diverse datasets, surface meaningful insights, and design intuitive tools that help teams understand and improve the intelligence behind Apple products. You'll work across the full data lifecycle: discovering signals in large-scale distributed logs, building search and retrieval mechanisms to make data accessible, and crafting interactive visualizations and evaluations that guide product direction and system performance.

Our team works at the intersection of hardware, software, and intelligence. We design the systems, infrastructure, and tools that enable Apple's next generation of AI-driven experiences — from on-device middleware and distributed inference platforms to large-scale data pipelines, interactive analytics, and advanced developer tooling. We collaborate closely with hardware, robotics, ML, design, and platform teams to build end-to-end solutions that are performant, intuitive, and deeply integrated into Apple's ecosystem. The work is hands-on, highly cross-disciplinary, and central to shaping how Apple's intelligent systems evolve.

Responsibilities

• Explore, analyze, and model large volumes of multi-modal data from devices and cloud systems to identify trends, correlations, and anomalies
• Design and build interactive dashboards, visualizations, and metrics that help engineering and product teams evaluate system behavior
• Develop search, retrieval, and indexing strategies to make data more discoverable, usable, and actionable across teams
• Partner with AI and robotics engineers to design evaluation frameworks, KPIs, and diagnostics that assess data quality, model behavior, and system performance
• Work with cloud engineers to shape how data is organized, stored, and exposed for efficient querying
• Investigate data quality issues, define validation strategies, and recommend improvements to data collection and pipeline design
• Collaborate with hardware, robotics, AI, and user experience teams to interpret data within the broader system context
• Communicate insights clearly through written analyses, visual storytelling, and presentations to stakeholders

Minimum Qualifications

• Proven experience in data science, analytics engineering, or applied research roles
• Strong proficiency in Python and common data analysis libraries
• Expertise with data visualization tools or frameworks for building interactive dashboards
• Experience querying and modeling data in SQL and NoSQL environments
• Ability to analyze large-scale, high-dimensional, and multi-modal datasets
• Familiarity with designing or using search and retrieval systems for large-scale data
• Experience designing KPIs, evaluation metrics, or experiment analyses for complex systems
• Strong statistical intuition and experience with exploratory data analysis and hypothesis testing
• Ability to translate complex findings into clear, actionable insights for cross-functional teams
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics, or related field, and 5+ years of industry experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working with data from distributed or real-time systems, robotics, or multi-modal AI
• Familiarity with information retrieval techniques (ranking, embedding-based search, relevance modeling)
• Experience collaborating with ML teams on evaluation methodologies, dataset design, or model diagnostics
• Knowledge of metadata management systems, cataloging approaches, or data documentation strategies
• Background in statistical modeling, time-series analysis, or anomaly detection
• Experience with visualization frameworks used for large datasets
• Understanding of cloud-scale data processing and distributed compute frameworks

Pay & Benefits

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 $141,800 and $258,600, 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.