Sr Software Engineer, Access/Car Keys Engineering

At Apple, extraordinary ideas quickly become extraordinary products and experiences. The Access Engineering & Wallet Services team is redefining what digital access means, from unlocking your car and front door to authenticating securely with just your iPhone or Apple Watch. We're looking for a seasoned software engineer who thrives on sophisticated problem-solving, spirited technical debate, and turning ambitious ideas into reality at global scale. If you're motivated by product excellence, not just clean code - and if you bring both resilience and creativity to navigating a deeply cross-functional environment - we'd love to hear from you.

Description

You'll be joining a team that values clarity, courage, and craft - where engineers have a voice, debates are healthy, and great ideas win. The Access / Car Keys Engineering team designs and builds the systems that make seamless, secure access possible. This role offers significant ownership, ideal for engineers ready to shape architecture and influence direction across multiple teams. Whether your background is in a large-scale distributed environment or a fast-moving startup, you bring strong technical intuition and a desire to build systems that last.

Responsibilities

• In this role, you will:
• Lead the architecture and development of distributed backend systems powering Apple Wallet's digital access and Car Key experiences.
• Build secure, performant APIs that integrate with partner ecosystems
• Collaborate closely with hardware, security, and product teams to build deeply integrated, privacy-preserving user experiences.
• Apply AI to improve efficiency, reliability, intelligence, and personalization in our product
• Mentor and guide other engineers, encouraging a culture of technical rigor, open dialogue, and thoughtful innovation.

• 10+ years of backend software engineering experience in languages such as Java, Kotlin, or Go
• Proven track record to deliver results in large, matrixed organizations-navigating ambiguity, aligning diverse stakeholders, and driving transparency through data and empathy.
• Familiarity with leveraging AI to accelerate development
• Proven success building scalable, reliable, and secure distributed systems and APIs
• Strong foundation in concurrency, asynchronous processing, and event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka)
• Experience with Relational and NoSQL databases
• Familiarity with DevOps, CI/CD, and production service ownership
• BS in Computer Science or equivalent technical field

• Experience developing or integrating AI/ML-driven systems or decision pipelines
• Experience with iOS development or Apple platform integration
• Ability to thrive in a matrixed, cross-functional environment and influence without direct authority
• Exceptional interpersonal skills - comfortable leading design discussions, challenging ideas constructively, and driving alignment