Motion Sensing System Architect

Motion sensors bridge the physical and digital realms, enabling seamless user interaction and motion features across Apple products. The Motion Sensing Hardware Team integrates MEMS and magnetic sensing technologies throughout Apple's product portfolio in a collaborative environment that fosters creativity and engineering excellence. Invention and patent creation are encouraged to revolutionize product design through innovative technologies and exceptional user experiences. As a member of this team, you will own the end-to-end sensing system architecture — from transducer physics through signal chain and algorithm — shaping how motion sensing capabilities are defined, developed, and delivered from concept through high-volume manufacturing.

Description

You will own the motion sensing system architecture for state-of-the-art sensors (magnetic, inertial, and pressure) across Apple products. Your primary responsibility is to drive the feature roadmap, define feature requirements, and systematically decompose them into system requirements and sensor module specifications. You will build and validate quantitative end-to-end models capturing the full signal chain — physical, electrical, and algorithmic — to ensure that sensor specifications and intermediate figures of merit guarantee feature-level performance. Beyond requirements definition, you will own sensor integration into the product system, leveraging modeling and simulation to optimize sensor placement and working cross-functionally to ensure placement meets performance, mechanical, and manufacturing constraints. You will define comprehensive validation plans, execute them rigorously, and generate high-quality reports to communicate results, risks, and recommendations to leadership and cross-functional teams.

Minimum Qualifications

BS and a minimum of 10 years relevant industry experience. Practical understanding of motion sensors (magnetic, inertial, pressure) and relevant physics. Experience in architecture and system-level design of sensing systems.

Preferred Qualifications

PhD with 5+ years of hands-on experience and a proven track record shipping motion sensor or sensing system products. Experience in architecture, design, characterization, and validation of MEMS sensing systems (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer), including theory of operation, signal processing, fabrication, packaging, and design trade-offs. Deep, multi-disciplinary understanding of EE, ME, transducer physics, and system engineering principles. Proficiency in modeling, simulation, and analysis tools (ANSYS Maxwell, COMSOL, MATLAB, Python, JMP); experience designing and running FEA or Monte Carlo simulations. Experience in sensor placement optimization through modeling (FEA, magnetic/inertial simulation) within product-level constraints. Strong fundamentals in signal processing, probability, and statistics; competency in sensor fusion, machine learning, and mathematical modeling is an asset. Experience defining and executing validation plans from characterization through production readiness. Experience building and testing complex multi-physics systems and delivering related prototypes. Excellent written and verbal communication skills with solid collaboration and leadership abilities.