ML Research Engineer, Apple Services Engineering, Search

The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) team is one of the most exciting examples of Apple's long-held passion for combining art and technology. These are the people who power the App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple Books. And they do it on a massive scale, meeting Apple's high expectations with high performance to deliver a huge variety of entertainment in over 35 languages to more than 150 countries. These engineers build secure, end-to-end solutions. They develop the custom software used to process all the creative work, the tools that providers use to deliver that media, all the server-side systems, and the APIs for many Apple services. Thanks to Apple's unique integration of hardware, software, and services, engineers here partner to get behind a single unified vision. That vision always includes a deep commitment to strengthening Apple's privacy policy, one of Apple's core values. Although services are a bigger part of Apple's business than ever before, these teams remain small, nimble, and cross-functional, offering greater exposure to the array of opportunities here.

Description

The ASE Search team powers search for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, iTunes and more on iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, web browsers, 3rd party devices, and Windows. We're a diverse collective of problem solvers and doers, continually reimagining what's possible to help us all find what we love in new ways. Our engineers have created some tough acts to follow, and they continue to lead us to innovative breakthroughs. Because they're motivated not by what would be easy, but by what would be amazing. We are looking for extraordinary machine learning engineers and researchers to help build next-generation search features for Apple's ground breaking devices and platforms. We are a key part of the Apple ecosystem.","responsibilities":"YOU WILL

Have a major impact on the way people search & discover on Apple devices worldwide.

Think through complex research problems, simplify where necessary, invent when needed, to drive a principled vision from thought to reality.

Present key technical and novel research work in public forums.

Conduct AB Tests to ensure we objectively measure improvements.

Be responsible for improving search recall and ranking.

Use big data technology to evaluate and prioritize content discovery features.

Collaborate with other world-class engineers, researchers, and statisticians to ensure that features and models are functioning at or above expected performance levels.

Develop complex components in large scale distributed systems using high-performance programming languages (Java/Go/Rust/Scala/Python etc)

Design & Implement solutions for automated unit and integration tests that enable continuous integration and delivery.

Ensure successful deployment of features, code, data, and models to production.

Support search on all devices (macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, Siri/HomePod, and more) globally in languages from Arabic to Russian and everything in between.

Preferred Qualifications

Deep understanding of search and information retrieval fundamentals including indexing, query understanding,

2+ years of relevant industry experience

Experience in training and evaluating machine learning models using Python/PyTorch/TensorFlow

Experience building big data pipelines with Scala, and Spark

Experience in distributed computing, micro-services architecture, search and related technologies.

Experience with GoLang is a plus

Familiarity with A/B experimentation and data/data-driven product development

Experience leading technical aspects for complex multi-functional projects

Passion. Our customers love what we do at Apple and we want the same from our engineers

Minimum Qualifications

Strong industry experience with one or more of the following: search, classification, regression, recommendation systems, ranking systems, fraud detection, online advertising, or related

MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related subject area

Knowledge of ML models using Transformers, Large Language Models, Reinforcement Learning, TensorFlow, and PyTorch

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 .