Machine Learning Research Engineer, App Store Search

The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) team is one of the most exciting examples of Apple's long-held passion for combining art and technology. People here create the experiences loved by users across App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple Books. The scale is massive â delivering content and entertainment in over 35 languages to more than 150 countries, while meeting Apple's high bar on quality and performance. The team is responsible for building secure, robust, end-to-end solutions across server and client to solve challenging problems. Thanks to Apple's unique integration of hardware, software, and services, engineers here work with a single unified vision of deep commitment to strengthening Apple's core principles such as customer focus, privacy, and relentless innovation. Although services are a bigger part of Apple's business than ever before, these teams remain small, nimble, and cross-functional, offering an opportunity to work with passionate people, contribute ideas, and ship innovative software. Here, you'll do more than just join a team â you'll be creating positive impact in people's lives.

The ASE Search team is a vital part of the Apple ecosystem, powering search for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, iTunes and more, on a wide set of platforms such as iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Safari, 3rd party devices, and Windows. Driven by passion for the extraordinary rather than the easy, our team of problem solvers is dedicated to helping users discover media and content in exciting new ways. We are looking for motivated machine learning engineers and researchers to join us in our journey. As an ML Research Engineer on the ASE Search team, you will contribute to the design and development of next-generation search and conversational discovery features for Apple's groundbreaking devices and platforms.

Minimum Qualifications

• MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related subject area
• 2+ years of relevant industry experience in ML or data systems
• Knowledge of generative AI systems including Large Language Models, Transformers, and techniques such as RAG and fine-tuning
• Experience with one or more ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow
• Familiarity with search, recommendation systems, conversational engines, or related domains
• Strong communication skills and ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment

Preferred Qualifications

• MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related subject area
• 4+ years of relevant industry experience in ML or data systems
• Experience in building search or conversational capabilities like query understanding, retrieval, ranking, or indexing
• Familiarity with big data pipelines using Scala, Python, or Apache Spark
• Exposure to distributed backend services, Kubernetes, or cloud infrastructure
• Experience with GoLang or gRPC services
• Familiarity with A/B experimentation and data-driven product development