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Consumer Electronics, Software, Services, Retail

Sr. Machine Learning Engineer - Answers, Knowledge & Information (AKI)

Santa Clara, CAOnsiteFull TimeSeniorPosted 1 month agoVisa sponsorship available

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Required skills

  • information retrieval
  • natural language processing
  • machine learning
  • deep learning
  • supervised learning
  • ranking models
  • embeddings
  • representation learning
  • evaluation metrics
  • search relevance

Nice to have

  • AI
  • Mathematics
  • distributed systems
  • NLP

Role summary

Apple's Siri team is seeking a Sr. Machine Learning Engineer to enhance local search capabilities across various Apple products. This role involves leveraging innovative ML techniques and LLMs to understand queries, rank documents, and deliver answers. You will own the ML development cycle, lead model development for search quality improvements, and mentor junior engineers. The ideal candidate has 8+ years of experience in information retrieval, NLP, ML, or deep learning, with a strong understanding of ML theory and proven ability to apply advanced techniques at scale. Experience with experimentation and A/B testing is crucial.

Siri helps hundreds of millions of people find the information they are looking for. A critical part of that mission is helping them quickly find and discover local businesses, places of interest, and addresses. Users rely on us for relevant and easy access to local information like finding a favorite or romantic restaurant, business hours, nearby coffee shop addresses, and directions to prominent locations. The Geo domain team is redefining how hundreds of millions of people use their devices to navigate and explore the physical world around them. We are part of a wider effort to power search across a variety of Apple products – including Siri, Spotlight, Safari, Messages, and more. As part of our team, you will be using innovative machine learning techniques and LLMs in order to understand queries, rank documents, and find useful answers to users’ questions. We are looking for an experienced ML engineer with hands-on experience in search and recommendation and deploying powerful machine learning models at scale. You will join a team that combines strong technical skills, product vision, and a love of all things local to bring together the pieces needed to deliver an extraordinary Maps experience in Siri and Spotlight.

Description


As a member of our fast-paced group, you’ll have the unique and rewarding opportunity to shape upcoming products from Apple. Our team includes a diversity of backgrounds from applied scientists with a focus in NLP to experienced distributed systems. We are looking for candidates with both applied machine learning experience and strong engineering skills. The role will have the following responsibilities: - Own the entire ML development cycle from opportunity analysis, exploration, and prototyping to data collection, feature engineering, training, evaluation, and deployment in production. - Lead the development of machine learning models to improve search quality across retrieval, ranking, reranking, and query understanding. - Improve search quality and experience by leveraging techniques such as learning-to-rank, embedding models, contrastive learning, multi-task learning, and reinforcement learning where appropriate. - Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership in architecting ML systems and designing ML models. - Understand product requirements, then translate them into modeling tasks and engineering tasks.

Minimum Qualifications


You have 8+ years of experience in information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, or deep learning. You have a deep understanding of machine learning theory, including supervised learning, ranking models, embeddings, representation learning, and evaluation metrics. You have proven ability to apply advanced ML techniques to improve search relevance and retrieval quality at scale. You are comfortable leading experimentation, offline evaluation, and online A/B testing for iterative improvements in search quality. You have excellent interpersonal skills, the ability to work independently as well as as part of a team. You have a Master’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience in machine learning or a related field.

Preferred Qualifications


Advanced diploma in AI, Machine Learning, Computer Science, or Mathematics

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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