Software Engineer - Data Services, IS&T AI & Data Platforms

Summary

AI & Data Platforms (AiDP) is IS&T's engine for AI-powered innovation. The team brings together data, application development, and machine learning — including generative AI — along with data services and customer success functions, to help IS&T build solutions more efficiently and streamline the adoption and embedding of generative AI across Apple. Apple's AI & Data Platform (AiDP) Data Services organization is seeking an experienced, versatile database systems engineer to join our Data Services SRE team. Engineers on this team develop and contribute to cross-cutting software and platform tooling that manages a fleet of relational, distributed-SQL, document, search, and analytics engines powering some of Apple's most critical internet services, deployed at massive scale across data-centers worldwide. In AiDP, your work will benefit hundreds of millions of users and is critical to the success of some of the most visible current and future Apple features.

Minimum Qualifications

BS or MS in Computer Science / related fields or equivalent work experience, with above 10 years in a Site Reliability Engineering / Infrastructure focused role. Hands-on production experience with at least two of PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, CockroachDB, Couchbase, OpenSearch, or Apache Doris, supporting internet-facing production services via On Call and Incident Management. Operational experience running large-scale infrastructure with heavy reliance on automation tooling, across Datacenter and Cloud architectures (including Alibaba Cloud/Ali Cloud and/or AWS). Excellent troubleshooting and performance deep-dive analysis skills; a resourceful, first-principles problem solver with strong technical writing habits. Good understanding in one or more of the following programming languages: Python, Go.

Preferred Qualifications

Real operational experience managing stateful services at scale on Kubernetes (operators, StatefulSets, CSI storage). Experience building database-as-a-service control planes, provisioning APIs, or self-service tooling. Proven track record of engine-agnostic, cross-cloud / hybrid-cloud data migrations at scale. Experience defining engine-agnostic observability (SLIs/SLOs), backup, and DR standards across a heterogeneous fleet. Experience operating real-time OLAP/analytics engines (e.g., Apache Doris, ClickHouse, StarRocks) at scale. Proficiency in Mandarin (spoken and written), to support coordination with local Ali Cloud teams and regional vendors/partners. Contributions to open-source database projects or internal data-platform tooling.

Description

The AiDP Data Services SRE team builds engine-agnostic platform capabilities — provisioning, backup/restore, observability, and self-service — spanning PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, Couchbase, OpenSearch, MongoDB, Oracle, and Apache Doris. A key part of this role is designing and operating engine-agnostic data migration tooling across hybrid-cloud environments with minimal downtime and guaranteed data integrity. This role requires strong communication, partnership with Core Storage and Analytics teams, and effective collaboration across a distributed team.

Responsibilities

Understanding of core SRE concepts — Monitoring, Alerting, Incident management. Understanding of database concepts (consistency models, isolation levels, crash and recovery semantics) across relational, distributed-SQL, document, search, and OLAP/analytics paradigms. Performance engineering (design concepts, profile-guided optimization) applied across heterogeneous engines. Service management across bare metal, virtualized (EC2, Ali Cloud ECS), and containerized (K8s) style platforms. Design and operate engine-agnostic data migration across hybrid clouds, including cutover strategy, replication/validation, and rollback. Datacenter architecture, multi-datacenter system design, failure domains, and wide-area networking. Produce and maintain high-quality documentation — runbooks, architecture diagrams, post-incident reviews, and migration playbooks. Ensure compliance with local data residency, cross-border data transfer, and regulatory requirements applicable to China-based infrastructure.