Data Services Engineer

Summary

The people here at Apple don’t just build products — we craft the kind of wonder that’s revolutionized entire industries. It’s the diversity of those people and their ideas that supports the innovation that runs through everything we do, from amazing technology to industry-leading environmental efforts. Join Apple, and help us leave the world better than we found it. Are you interested in building high-performance, highly scalable and available database systems that support Apple’s current and future growth? Are you seeking an environment where you can drive innovation? If so, please read ahead!

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience 5+ years of hands-on experience operating and scaling distributed data platforms — including Cassandra, Kafka, Elasticsearch, Redis — in large-scale production environments Demonstrated ability to lead technical projects independently — from scoping and design through delivery and post-launch ownership Deep expertise with multi-cloud architectures With data services like Aurora Postger,RDS MSK, ElastiCache) and experience designing hybrid cloud environments. Familiarity with Ali Cloud services (e.g., ApsaraDB, Kafka on Ali Cloud, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch equivalents) and the ability to evaluate and compare internally available databases and in-house platforms against Ali Cloud offerings to inform build-vs-adopt decisions Ability to design and implement custom observability and metrics solutions for DataServices — combining in-house tooling with open-source frameworks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) — to support monitoring across AWS, Ali Cloud, and internal platforms. Strong infrastructure-as-code proficiency using Terraform, Ansible, Crossplane, or equivalent — with a track record of building reusable, scalable automation Experience deploying and operating containerized database workloads on Kubernetes in production Solid Python skills for automation, operational tooling, and platform workflows Deep understanding of database internals — query optimization, cluster tuning, capacity planning, and failure analysis Proven experience designing and executing HA/DR strategies, zero-downtime migrations, and large-scale infrastructure transitions Strong cross-functional collaboration skills — ability to influence without authority and drive alignment across engineering teams

Preferred Qualifications

Experience building or improving observability and alerting frameworks for database fleet monitoring (Grafana, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry) Experience provisioning and managing AWS Managed Data Services (RDS Aurora, MSK, ElastiCache) using Crossplane — defining cloud infrastructure as Kubernetes-native custom resources Familiarity with security and compliance requirements in financial data systems Background in platform migrations — data center-to-cloud, infrastructure consolidation, or cloud-to-cloud transitions Experience at elevating team technical standards through code review, runbooks, and shared tooling Exposure to emerging technologies including vector databases or AI-ready data infrastructure

Description

Wallets, Payments and Commerce (WPC) Engineering is looking for a skilled Data Services Engineer to help architect, scale, and evolve our data infrastructure across cloud and on-premise environments. Our team is responsible for delivering high-performance, highly available data services — including relational, NoSQL, streaming, and search platforms — that power Apple's financial systems at massive scale. This position requires a highly motivated individual who likes large-scale challenges in a fast-paced environment. This role requires the ability to work independently on live production systems while collaborating with multiple teams. If you are passionate about building infrastructure that operates at the intersection of scale, resilience, and innovation, we want to hear from you.

Responsibilities

Drive the design and operational excellence of critical data services, work closely with application teams, and lead automation initiatives that reduce toil and increase reliability. Operate in a multi-cloud environment spanning AWS and Ali Cloud, alongside Apple's internal/in-house platforms — evaluating internally available database offerings against Ali Cloud services to guide platform and vendor decisions, and building custom observability and metrics solutions by combining Apple internal tooling with open-source frameworks.