Senior Data Engineer

Apple is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to design and deploy scalable, AI-ready data pipelines that power analytics across Apple Music, Video, and Books. This role fuses rigorous systems engineering with close business partnership to build modular infrastructure that can scale to massive workloads. The ideal candidate will own production data systems and drive self-service analytics across the organization.

Responsibilities

• Design and scale modular data pipelines capable of handling Apple Music's enormous data volumes, delivering dependable self-service data products with clear contracts and SLAs for internal teams, data scientists, and external partners to consume confidently.
• Identify and integrate AI-enabled tooling, automation, and advanced analytics workflows into current data systems. Explore how large language models, retrieval-augmented generation pipelines, and emerging technologies can elevate capabilities and efficiency.
• Build robust validation frameworks to sanitize unpredictable feeds, implement automated data assertions, lineage tracking, anomaly detection, and monitoring to ensure transparency and reliability across the production data lifecycle.
• Partner with data scientists, analysts, and cross-functional stakeholders to deliver structured, high-performance datasets backed by clear SLAs, accelerating insights and reducing ad-hoc engineering requests.
• Collaborate effectively across Analytics, Operations, Engineering, and Partner teams; translate ambiguous requirements into resilient engineering solutions aligned with organizational priorities.
• Lead the team's evolution toward scalable, self-service analytics; enforce CI/CD practices, mentor peers, and foster a data engineering culture focused on quality, reliability, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional experience in data engineering or systems architecture, with a proven history of owning production data systems at massive scale and processing billions of records in high-volume environments.
• Advanced proficiency in Python and SQL, with hands-on experience across distributed data processing frameworks (such as PySpark/Spark), modular software design, and automated testing methodologies.
• Extensive experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines, automated deployment workflows, and version-controlled data infrastructure.
• Proven expertise in data quality management, resolving complex taxonomy mapping issues, and implementing programmatic anomaly detection on large datasets.
• Strong ability to lead projects, influence cross-functional teams, and drive consensus in a matrixed organization by translating stakeholder needs into scalable, well-scoped technical solutions.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences and influence stakeholders at all levels.
• Strong aptitude for logical reasoning, critical thinking, and complex problem-solving.
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field.

Technologies

• Python
• SQL
• PySpark
• Spark
• Apache Iceberg
• Delta Lake
• Tableau
• Superset
• SPARQL
• Graph databases
• LLMs
• RAG pipelines

Benefits

• Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
• Retirement benefits
• A range of discounted products and access to free services
• Reimbursement for certain educational expenses, including tuition
• Discretionary employee stock programs
• Eligibility for discretionary restricted stock unit awards
• Discounted Apple stock via the Employee Stock Purchase Plan
• Discretionary bonuses or commission payments
• Relocation assistance

Description

The Senior Data Engineer will architect and deploy robust, AI-ready data pipelines that underpin our analytics capabilities. The role requires deep systems engineering discipline combined with strong business partnership, with a track record of operating at massive scale and delivering extensible, modular systems that span Music, Video, and Books.