Software Development Engineer (Developer Experience and Platform Tools)

Envision your potential here at Apple, where fresh concepts swiftly transform into extraordinary products. Bring your passion and dedication to your role, and there's no limit to what we can achieve together. We're seeking a diligent and enthusiastic individual to join our exceptional team, and if that's you, we'd love to hear from you!

The Apple Service Engineering (ASE) team is responsible for the systems and infrastructure that drive Apple's services, including iCloud, Apple Music, Apple TV, Siri, and Maps, amongst others. Apple's unique integration of hardware, software, and services means you'll collaborate with top-tier engineers from various disciplines to design and deliver products our customers adore. Our services must scale globally, remain highly available, and "just work."

The ASE Compute team is looking for a software engineer to own the tooling that lets our internal cloud compute platforms ship quickly and safely. You will own and evolve our platform qualification and test automation service - the system that decides whether a hardware or software release is fit for production - and own the CI/CD and release engineering practice for software that powers multiple internal compute platforms. This is a builder role: you'll write the tools, define the release pipelines, and then work with platform, SRE, and hardware engineering teams to qualify new server generations and OS releases across both x86 and Apple silicon server architectures.

If you like being the catalyst who makes a magnitude of other engineers faster, and are excited about the idea of differentiating "the tests passed" and "we know this release is good," this is the role.

Description

In this role, as part of the ASE Compute Organization, you will:

Own and develop our platform qualification and test automation service end to end - architecture, code, API, data model, and supporting UI - growing it into the authoritative signal for release readiness across our compute fleet

Own CI/CD and release engineering for systems that lay foundation of multiple compute platforms - design the pipelines, promotion gates, artifact and versioning strategy, and rollout mechanics that take a change from commit to production across many sites

Drive software qualification for hardware and software releases, including new server generations and OS/firmware releases on both x86 and Apple Silicon. Define what "qualified" means, automate the evidence for it, and shorten the qualification cycle from weeks to days

Write and review code, generate and review design documentation

Enjoy working on scalability, resilience, security, efficiency, and performance limits of infrastructure services. Be curious about how systems work and, more importantly, how they fail

Approach complex issues with creativity, ready to take risks and course-correct effectively to impact the success of the platform

Participate in on-call rotation and partner with the SRE team to triage, investigate, and resolve production issues

Partner with hardware/software engineering, OS, and platform teams across Apple to make qualification a first-class, automated part of every release

Preferred Qualifications

Experience qualifying or releasing software against multiple CPU architectures (x86_64 and arm64/Apple silicon), including cross-compilation, multi-arch artifacts, and architecture-specific failure modes

Experience with hardware bring-up or qualification programs - DVT/EVT-style validation pipelines, software performance benchmarking, firmware/BMC/BIOS interaction, burn-in and stress testing

Experience with virtualized and containerized runtime environments; operational knowledge of Kubernetes

Proficiency in Go and/or Python; comfort building services, CLIs, and web UIs

Experience with release safety practices: canaries, progressive rollout, automated rollback, and release metrics

Experience with measuring, analyzing, and optimizing performance and efficiency for large-scale compute platforms

Ability to effectively communicate within a team and with project stakeholders

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent related experience.

Demonstrated ability to design, debug, and test complex software systems

3+ years of experience in related software development (or comparable academic experience)

Experience designing and building CI/CD systems, build/release pipelines, or developer tooling used by other engineering teams

Experience with test automation at scale: designing test frameworks, managing test infrastructure, and producing release signal engineers and other teams can trust

Strong fundamentals of operating systems, and comfort (or curiosity) debugging at the OS and hardware boundary

Familiarity with all aspects of software development, from architecture to deployment and maintenance

Quick learner and contributor to new code bases

Customer-focused thinking and strong problem-solving skills with attention to detail

Excellent verbal and written communication skills to effectively collaborate with cross-functional partners across different time zones

Enthusiasm about upholding Apple's standards in product quality, design, and user experience

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 $150,400 and $277,600, 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