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Sr Software Architect Perception Systems

Apple· Machine Learning and AI
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Hybrid (Cupertino, CA)$184.7k - $324.8kfull-timePosted 2w ago

About the role

Senior software architect responsible for the end-to-end software architecture of Apple’s perception stack, including real-time dataflow, runtime, and system infrastructure to turn perception and ML algorithms into a fast, reliable, and secure on-device product. Sets technical direction, partners with hardware, software, and product teams, and ensures latency-sensitive, production-ready perception solutions.

Responsibilities

  • Serving as DRI for the end-to-end software architecture of the perception stack, from camera, audio, and other sensor inputs through algorithm execution to downstream consumers, and setting its long-term technical direction.
  • Designing and building a real-time, graph-based dataflow runtime that schedules perception and ML workloads across heterogeneous compute (e.g., CPU, GPU, Neural Engine) with predictable latency.
  • Defining the system foundations that perception depends on, including sensor time synchronization, calibration management, inter-process communication, and data logging.
  • Ensuring privacy and security are core to the architecture, including isolating sensitive sensor processing in secure execution environments.
  • Partnering with perception and ML engineers to bring algorithms and models from prototype to production on device, making principled tradeoffs across latency, accuracy, power, and memory.
  • Building telemetry, tracing, profiling, and record/replay into the stack from day one, so that performance, stability, and regressions can be measured and reproduced against real-world data.
  • Driving cross-functional alignment with hardware, software, and platform teams across Apple on architecture, interfaces, dependencies, and integration schedules.
  • Partnering with program managers to break the roadmap into milestones, deliver against them, and re-plan when requirements change.
  • Setting engineering standards through design reviews and mentorship, and clearly communicating architectural decisions and tradeoffs to engineers and leadership.

Qualifications

  • 10+ years building production systems software in C/C++, Swift, with deep knowledge of concurrency, scheduling, memory management, and IPC on a modern operating system.
  • A track record of shipping latency-sensitive or real-time systems to customers, with measurable performance and reliability targets.
  • Experience designing dataflow or algorithm-graph runtimes across heterogeneous compute.
  • Experience designing telemetry, tracing, and profiling into systems, and using that data to drive performance and stability work.
  • Working knowledge of classical perception and robotics (e.g., sensor fusion, time synchronization, calibration, state estimation, tracking, or SLAM/VIO).
  • Experience deploying ML models into production runtimes, including quantization, scheduling, and performance tradeoffs.
  • Demonstrated technical leadership across team and organizational boundaries.
  • Experience partnering with program managers to break work into milestones, deliver against them, and re-plan when requirements change.
  • Clear written and verbal communication with both engineers and leadership.
  • BS or MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience.

Skills

Required:End-to-end software architectureReal-time graph-based dataflow runtimeSensor synchronization and calibration managementPrivacy and secure execution environmentsTelemetry, tracing, profiling, record/replayLeadership and cross-functional collaborationCommunication to engineers and leadership

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical and dental coverage
  • retirement benefits
  • discounted products and free services
  • reimbursement for certain educational expenses including tuition
  • potential discretionary bonuses or commission payments
  • relocation assistance
  • Apple Employee Stock Purchase Plan
  • discretionary stock awards
Last updated Oct 9, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Apple

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