ML Research Engineer, Search - Apple Services Engineering
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 Search for 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 Research team sits at the intersection of cutting-edge research and production-scale impact. We follow state-of-the-art developments in machine learning, information retrieval, and natural language processing-then bring those innovations into Apple Services Search products used by hundreds of millions of people daily. We're looking for engineers with strong research instincts who can identify promising techniques in the literature, adapt them to our unique challenges, and ship them at scale.
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We power search for the App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, and more across iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, visionOS, and beyond. If you're excited by the prospect of reading a new paper one week and seeing your implementation of its ideas serving customers the next, this role is for you.
","responsibilities":"Stay current with academic research in search, retrieval, NLP, and machine learning; identify techniques with potential to improve Apple Services Search
Prototype and evaluate novel approaches, running rigorous offline experiments to validate hypotheses before production investment
Think through complex research problems, simplify where necessary, and invent when needed to drive a principled vision from thought to reality
Present key technical and novel research work in internal and external public forums, including potential publications at top-tier venues
Translate research prototypes into production-quality systems that serve customers at scale
Design and conduct A/B tests to objectively measure improvements and ensure successful deployment of features, code, data, and models to production
Collaborate with world-class engineers, researchers, and statisticians to ensure that features and models perform at or above expected levels
Have a major impact on the way people search and discover content on Apple devices worldwide
Support search across all devices and globally in languages from Arabic to Russian and everything in between
Preferred Qualifications
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, NLP, or a related field
Publications at top venues (e.g., SIGIR, ACL, EMNLP, NeurIPS, ICML, KDD, WWW, WSDM)
Experience with retrieval-augmented generation, dense retrieval, or learned sparse retrieval
Familiarity with reinforcement learning, especially in ranking or recommendation contexts
Experience building big data pipelines with Hadoop, Spark, or similar technologies
Experience leading technical aspects of complex multi-functional projects
Track record of successful research-to-production transitions
Minimum Qualifications
MS in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Information Retrieval, or a related field
4+ years of relevant industry experience in search, ranking, recommendation systems, NLP, or related ML domains
Strong publication record OR demonstrated experience bringing research ideas from literature into production systems
Deep understanding of search and information retrieval fundamentals including indexing, query understanding, retrieval, and ranking
Proficiency with modern ML frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX)
Experience with Transformers, large language models, and neural retrieval/ranking approaches
Strong programming skills in Python; working knowledge of at least one high-performance language (Go, C++, Rust, or similar)
Demonstrated ability to read, understand, and implement techniques from academic papers
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 .
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Parental Benefits
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