Operations Engineer - Retail Store Operations & Support

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. IS&T Retail Store Apps Engineering is responsible for the technology and IT systems used to enable Apple Retail Stores to service millions of customers enabling Apple Retail to become one of the best retailers in the world. Bring passion and dedication to your job and there's no telling what you could accomplish. Do you enjoy solving complex business problems with process and technology? Do you thrive in environments that require multi-functional thinking, collaboration, and innovation? If so, this may be the job for you.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent work experience. 2+ years of experience supporting critical, customer-facing systems in a high-volume production environment. 1+ years of hands-on experience with incident management platforms (e.g. ServiceNow) and issue tracking tools (e.g. Jira). 2+ years of practical experience with Splunk, including dashboard creation, SPL querying, and alert configuration for production triage, performance degradation analysis, and incident resolution. 2+ years of experience performing structured root cause analysis using application logs, telemetry, distributed traces, and customer feedback across complex, multi-system environments. Fluency in both Mandarin Chinese and English.

Preferred Qualifications

Hands-on experience building and orchestrating agentic workflows with SOTA language models, LLM-based automation, or AI-augmented operational tooling. Demonstrated ability to work across distributed systems, APIs, and microservices at an architectural level - understanding how failures propagate across system boundaries. Strong understanding of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP/TLS, load balancing) with the ability to diagnose connectivity issues between distributed systems. Strong root cause analysis skills using diverse data sources including application logs, telemetry, and customer feedback. Experience with frequently used scripting languages (Python preferred) for log analysis, data investigation, and lightweight automation of operational workflows. Excellent ability to communicate complex technical issues clearly and concisely to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Experience coordinating with distributed teams across multiple time zones in addition to strong cross-functional collaboration skills. Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines, Git-based version control, and release management/deployment processes. Experience with data visualization and analysis tools such as Tableau or Power BI. Proficiency in ITIL practices, including incident, problem, and change management. Experience validating data feeds between SAP (MM, SD, FI) and downstream retail systems, with the ability to identify and troubleshoot discrepancies in inventory, pricing, and order data. Previous experience supporting eCommerce platforms or Retail / Payment systems at scale in a plus.

Description

This is a hands-on engineering role with high visibility across Apple's global retail technology landscape and an opportunity to shape how production support operates at scale. As an Operations Engineer on the transactional operations vertical, you will own deep technical expertise across some of Apple Retail's most critical systems, including Point of Sale, Apple Financial Services, Carrier Services, Runner, and Catalog. You will combine that domain expertise with hands-on troubleshooting, building and extending GenAI agents, screening tools, and automation that fundamentally change how our team detects, investigates, and resolves issues. You will partner closely with Engineering, SRE, and business teams to drive root cause analysis, deliver process improvements, and bring clarity to complex technical problems for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. 
 The ideal candidate is a proactive problem solver who thrives in a fast-moving production environment and is energized by production environments where speed, scale, and precision all matter, who codes when needed, and who communicates with precision across audiences. If you are passionate about supporting reliable, high-impact systems that serve millions of customers worldwide, this may be the perfect opportunity for you.

Responsibilities

In this role, you will: Build and extend GenAI agents, automation that scale incident detection, triage, and resolution across the team. Develop deep technical ownership of transactional systems (Point Of Sale, Apple Financial Services, Carrier Services, Runner, Catalog) to investigate, debug, and resolve complex production incidents with speed and precision. Lead root cause analysis using application logs, telemetry, observability platforms, and ML-driven insights, partnering with engineering and leadership to prioritize and drive resolution. Contribute to the design and development of functional requirements, technical specifications, and support documentation for automation and process improvement initiatives. Partner cross-functionally with engineering teams, business stakeholders, to enhance product delivery, support strategy for new launches, and continuous improvement of service quality. Coordinate with our globally distributed team of consultants to ensure consistent execution of support functions. Participate in an on-call rotation to support critical applications and services, which may include infrequent non-standard hours and weekend coverage.