Job Description
Apple is where individual imaginations gather together, committed to the values that lead to great work! Every new product we build, service we create, or Apple Store experience we deliver is the result of us making each other’s ideas stronger. That happens because each of us believes we can make something wonderful and share it with the world.
Retail and Marcom Engineering, an IS&T team, builds and operates the systems and experiences that connect Apple's products with its customers. The team owns the technology behind both Apple's online and physical stores and drives the interactive marketing experiences and tools that keep creative operations moving. Together, those functions deliver the technology behind every product story Apple tells and every purchase a customer makes.
The Apple Retail Engineering team builds the software systems that power all the magical experiences we offer our Apple Store customers, whether digital or in-person. As a part of this organization, the Retail Engineering Foundations group focuses on developer productivity, shared runtime systems, and common frameworks & platforms for all Retail Engineering teams. When you join Retail Foundations as a Software Engineering Manager, you’ll help plan, design, and manage frameworks, platforms, and systems that countless Apple customers and employees rely on every day. Together, we’ll explore all the ways to improve how the Apple Store operates, freeing our employees to do what they do best and crafting magical experiences for our customers.
As a hands-on Software Engineering Manager, operate as a strong technical lead with a manager's hat — writing code, reviewing designs, and remaining directly engaged in the day-to-day engineering work of your team, while also guiding a small team of engineers early in their careers through architecting, designing, testing, documenting, improving, and maintaining code, primarily in Java (and other languages as needed). The focus will be on foundational systems, frameworks, and platforms for Retail Engineering. You will partake in every aspect of your projects, from planning to design to implementation and future iterations, and you will be encouraged to play an extended role in collaboratively planning and designing solutions that address the requirements of many Retail Engineering teams. The ideal candidate is self-motivated, proactive, and results-driven with a servant-leader mindset. Attention to detail, dedication to providing high-quality solutions, modeling engineering excellence, and the ability to guide their team towards the timely delivery of cross-functional projects are all crucial qualities for working at Apple as a Software Engineering Manager. The ideal candidate will also possess excellent communication and collaboration skills to work with all Retail Engineering teams, various internal and external partners, and senior leaders of Apple.
Preferred Qualifications
Strong written and verbal communication skills, mastery of long-form writing, and leadership presentations.
Track record of delivering distributed systems projects with multiple, globally distributed stakeholders, while actively hiring, growing, and mentoring junior and senior software engineer team members.
Comfortable using CI/CD tools to build, test, deploy, and release containerized software applications on cloud-based Kubernetes platforms (e.g., AWS EKS, GCP GKE, Azure AKS).
Extensive knowledge of networking concepts & protocols (e.g., HTTP/HTTPS, CDN, edge computing, load balancing, OSI model, etc.).
Minimum Qualifications
B.S. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional work experience.
5+ years of proven experience developing software in a professional capacity.
2+ years of direct people management experience leading 3+ software engineers.
3+ years of experience designing, implementing, and shipping distributed systems, with working knowledge of secure cloud API/RPC design.
3+ years of experience with relational, NewSQL, and NoSQL databases, including schema design and query optimization
Proficiency in OOP principles, data structures, algorithms, and software design patterns (e.g., GoF), with a proven focus on leading teams implementing testable, maintainable, and extensible distributed systems.
Experience with Java and one of Rust, C++, or Go, including mastery of concurrency, memory management, and performance optimization techniques.
