
Sr. Software Engineer, Enterprise Technology Services
Role summary
Apple's Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) organization is seeking a Sr. Software Engineer for Enterprise Technology Services (ETS). This role involves designing and developing high-scale, distributed backend systems that handle petabytes of data and millions of transactions per hour. Responsibilities include enhancing and maintaining platforms for identity, device security, anti-abuse, supply chain, and manufacturing. The ideal candidate will have 5+ years of software development experience, with at least 2 years in Java, and proficiency in distributed systems, messaging, caching, and database technologies. Preferred qualifications include tech lead experience, GenAI coding tools, search technologies, data lake architectures, and API design.
Description
ETS also oversees supply chain, manufacturing, and partner integration platforms, protecting data on more than 2.5 billion devices worldwide. And when Apple prepares for a global product launch, ETS owns the systems that ramp factory production — managing serial numbers, network credentials, and verified software. The ideal candidate will be responsible for designing and developing applications which deals in Petabyte of data and millions of transactions per hour. The candidate will be responsible for developing, enhancing and maintaining a highly scalable distributed platforms.
Minimum Qualifications
B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional work experience. 5+ years proven experience developing software in a professional capacity. Longer experience preferred. 2+ years proven experience with Java, including proficiency in concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization techniques. Proficiency in OOP principles, data structures, algorithms, and software design patterns (e.g. GoF), with a proven focus on implementing testable, maintainable, and extensible backend code. Experience designing, implementing, and shipping high-scale, high-performance, highly available, fault-tolerant, and secure cloud-based distributed systems. Experience with message-driven and event-driven architectures, including proficiency in messaging systems (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc.), event sourcing, CQRS patterns, and designing reliable asynchronous communication between distributed services. Experience with caching strategies and in-memory data technologies (e.g. Redis, Memcached, Hazelcast, Ehcache, etc.), including proficiency in cache invalidation patterns, distributed caching architectures, and session management for high-throughput applications. Experience using relational (e.g. Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, etc.) and NoSQL (e.g. Cassandra, MongoDB, etc.) databases, including proficiency in schema design, query optimization, performance tuning (e.g. execution plan analysis, indexing strategy, and query rewriting).
Preferred Qualifications
Track record of leading software projects within a team as a tech lead (TL), while mentoring software engineers. Hands-on experience leveraging GenAI coding tools (e.g., Claude, Copilot, Codex) to accelerate the software development lifecycle, enhance code quality, and streamline debugging and testing processes. Experience with search and indexing technologies (e.g. Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Solr, etc.), including designing search architectures, index optimization, query tuning, and implementing full-text search for large-scale datasets. Experience with data lake and lakehouse architectures, including modern table formats (e.g. Apache Iceberg, Delta Lake, Apache Hudi, etc.), cloud object storage (e.g. S3, GCS, ADLS, etc.), and designing scalable data architectures that unify batch and real-time analytics. Experience in API design and implementation, including proficiency in RESTful API principles, gRPC, GraphQL, contract-first design (e.g. OpenAPI/Swagger, Protobuf, etc.), API versioning strategies, gateway patterns, rate limiting, and designing APIs for backward compatibility and long-term evolution.
Sample Apple interview questions
- 1
Design a typeahead box for a search engine
system designmedium - 2
Design a rate limiter
system designmedium - 3
Architect a key-value store for distributed systems.
system designmedium - 4
Design a system to schedule jobs in a distributed environment
system designmedium - 5
What is an API and how does it work?
technicalmedium
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