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Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Apple· Apple Services Engineering (ASE)
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Hybrid (Seattle, WA), Hybrid (Cupertino, CA)$175k - $308.5kfull-timePosted 1mo ago

About the role

Senior ML Engineer focused on Generative AI, LLM architectures, and advanced NLP within Apple Services Engineering. Leads design, deployment, and optimization of LLM-powered systems, conducts research, mentors others, and translates ambiguous problems into robust ML solutions with measurable impact across Apple’s services.

Responsibilities

  • Architect, design, and deploy LLM-powered systems that unlock new capabilities for personalization, intelligent automation, and customer understanding across Apple’s services ecosystem.
  • Lead research in areas such as large-scale representation learning, semantic modeling, topic induction, natural language understanding, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
  • Develop and evolve taxonomies, embeddings, and model architectures capable of disentangling complex user or content behaviors in high-dimensional, unstructured data.
  • Drive LLM fine-tuning, evaluation, safety alignment, and optimization strategies to ensure performant, compliant, and frictionless user experiences.
  • Explore and productize methods such as parameter-efficient adaptation, multi-agent orchestration, active learning, RLHF, and novel inference optimization techniques.
  • Collaborate with engineering, product, and design organizations to translate ambiguous problem spaces into robust ML systems with measurable business and customer impact.
  • Build prototypes and production-grade solutions that advance Apple’s ability to reason over text, behavioral signals, and domain-specific knowledge at scale.
  • Contribute to Apple’s leadership in AI through patent filings, publications, and internal thought leadership.
  • Mentor and elevate other researchers, fostering excellence in experimentation, code quality, communication, and scientific rigor.

Qualifications

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, NLP, Statistics, or a related field—or equivalent industry experience delivering production AI systems.
  • At least 6 years of experience in an applied research or machine learning role.
  • Expert knowledge of deep learning and modern NLP, including transformer architectures and foundation model adaptation.
  • Experience with LLM model development, including fine-tuning, instruction tuning, and prompt engineering for domain-specific reasoning.
  • Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks such as PyTorch or TensorFlow, with experience deploying models in production systems.
  • Strong understanding of distributed data processing systems (e.g., Spark) and large-scale experimentation.
  • Proven ability to communicate research outcomes, architectural decisions, and technical tradeoffs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Skills

Required:LLM development and fine-tuningRAG and vector-based searchPythonPyTorch or TensorFlowDistributed data processingNLP & transformer architectures
Nice to have:Reinforcement learning / RLHF

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
  • retirement benefits
  • discounted products and free services
  • tuition reimbursement
  • potential discretionary bonuses or commission payments
  • relocation assistance
  • Stock programs eligibility (RSUs, ESPP)
Last updated Sep 18, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Apple

Discover the innovative world of Apple and shop everything iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV, plus explore accessories, entertainment, and expert device support.

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