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Principal Data Architect and Manager - Service Special Projects

Apple· Software and Services
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Cupertino, CA$237.6k - $401.7kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Senior technical authority and people leader responsible for end-to-end architecture of a real-time, petabyte-scale data backbone and for building/growing the data engineering team that delivers it.

Responsibilities

  • Define the end-to-end architecture of a multi-layered lakehouse on cloud object storage (Parquet, Iceberg/Delta), including partitioning, formats, compaction, and cost management at petabyte scale.
  • Establish data governance with schema registries, lineage, metadata management, quality checkpoints, and access controls across raw ingestion to normalized serving layers, aligned with privacy/security standards.
  • Architect batch, micro-batch, and streaming ETL/ELT pipelines for structured, semi-structured, and unstructured multimodal data (including image/media) with real-time metadata extraction and schema augmentation.
  • Design, build, and operate a fault-tolerant Apache Kafka streaming backbone with topic design, schema evolution, and delivery guarantees.
  • Set architectural direction for entity resolution, conflation, and knowledge-graph construction at scale (billions of entities).
  • Treat privacy as an architectural constraint (data minimization, retention/deletion enforcement).
  • Set the technical roadmap for the data platform and drive execution from architecture to production.
  • Build ingestion services for massive heterogeneous streams and own data contracts with producers.
  • Lead complex data transformations with emphasis on correctness, consistency, and analytical readiness.
  • Optimize pipelines for performance, reliability, and cost; evaluate batch vs streaming models.
  • Define SLAs, quality metrics, and observability standards for platform trust.
  • Represent data platform in cross-team forums (ML, search/ranking, on-device, platform teams).
  • Partner with recruiting to attract senior/staff data engineers; manage and mentor engineers; drive design reviews and operational excellence.
  • Communicate progress, trade-offs, and risks to senior leadership and partner organizations.
  • Cultivate engineering culture with ownership, rigorous reviews, responsible on-call, and privacy commitment.

Qualifications

  • MS Degree in Computer Science or related field
  • 12+ years in Data Architecture, Data Engineering, or Platform Engineering
  • At least 5 years in Principal, Staff, or Lead Manager capacity
  • Proven experience leading and managing engineers (hiring, performance management, mentorship)
  • Track record shipping petabyte-scale, low-latency data platforms in production
  • Deep cloud expertise with cloud object storage (e.g., AWS S3)
  • Experience architecting entity resolution, conflation, or knowledge-graph at scale
  • Experience designing pipelines processing multimodal data with ML model inference (LLMs, embeddings)
  • Familiarity with LLM/model-serving infrastructure trade-offs (GPU-backed serving)
  • Streaming expertise with Apache Kafka (or Kinesis) and stream processing (Spark/Flink)
  • Data modeling for large-scale ingest/retrieval/analytics (dimensional modeling, lakehouse patterns)
  • Experience defining SLAs, observability (Prometheus/Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry)
  • Proficiency in at least one data-pipeline language (Scala, Java, Python)
  • Cloud services orchestration and eventing in resilient production pipelines
  • Experience with vector search tech (e.g., Pinecone, Milvus) and embedding storage (pgvector, FAISS)
  • Excellent communication and ability to align multiple stakeholders around technical direction
  • Experience with embedding storage/retrieval and graph databases (TigerGraph, Neo4j)
  • Experience deploying ML/LLMs in production inference runtimes (ONNX Runtime, TensorRT, Triton, TorchServe)
  • Experience tuning batching, KV-cache, and GPU utilization for real-time inference
  • Experience with data governance tools (Apache Atlas, AWS Glue Catalog, DataHub)
  • Familiarity with IaC (Terraform, Pulumi) and modern CI/CD practices
  • Experience designing systems handling petabytes of unstructured media
  • Understanding of data privacy regulations and building privacy-preserving systems

Skills

Required:End-to-end data architectureData governanceETL/ELT pipeline designKafka and streamingEntity resolution / knowledge graphsPrivacy by designLeadership & people managementCloud data platforms (lakehouse)Multimodal data processing
Nice to have:LLMs and embeddings deployment

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
  • Retirement benefits
  • Discounted products and free services
  • Educational expense reimbursement (tuition)
  • Discretionary bonuses or commissions possibly
  • Relocation assistance possibly
  • Stock programs eligibility (RSUs, Employee Stock Purchase Plan)
Last updated Aug 7, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

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