Software Engineer, Data Services, IS&T Ai & Data Platforms

AI & Data Platforms (AiDP) is IS&T's engine for AI-powered innovation. The team brings together data, application development, and machine learning — including generative AI — along with data services and customer success functions, to help IS&T build solutions more efficiently and streamline the adoption and embedding of generative AI across Apple.

Apple's AI & Data Platform (AiDP) Data Services organization is seeking an experienced, versatile database systems engineer to join our Data Services SRE team. Engineers on this team develop and contribute to cross-cutting software and platform tooling that manages a fleet of relational, distributed-SQL, document, search, and analytics engines powering some of Apple's most critical internet services, deployed at massive scale across data-centers worldwide. In AiDP, your work will benefit hundreds of millions of users and is critical to the success of some of the most visible current and future Apple features.

## Description

The AiDP Data Services SRE team builds engine-agnostic platform capabilities — provisioning, backup/restore, observability, and self-service — spanning PostgreSQL, CockroachDB, Couchbase, OpenSearch, MongoDB, Oracle, and Apache Doris. A key part of this role is designing and operating engine-agnostic data migration tooling across hybrid-cloud environments with minimal downtime and guaranteed data integrity. This role requires strong communication, partnership with Core Storage and Analytics teams, and effective collaboration across a distributed team.

## Minimum qualifications

BS or MS in Computer Science / related fields or equivalent work experience, with 7–12 years in a Site Reliability Engineering / Infrastructure focused role.

Hands-on production experience with at least two of PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, CockroachDB, Couchbase, OpenSearch, or Apache Doris, supporting internet-facing production services via On Call and Incident Management.

Operational experience running large-scale infrastructure with heavy reliance on automation tooling, across Datacenter and Cloud architectures (including Alibaba Cloud/Ali Cloud and/or AWS).

Excellent troubleshooting and performance deep-dive analysis skills; a resourceful, first-principles problem solver with strong technical writing habits.

Good understanding in one or more of the following programming languages: Python, Go.

## Preferred qualifications

Real operational experience managing stateful services at scale on Kubernetes (operators, StatefulSets, CSI storage).

Experience building database-as-a-service control planes, provisioning APIs, or self-service tooling.

Proven track record of engine-agnostic, cross-cloud / hybrid-cloud data migrations at scale.

Experience defining engine-agnostic observability (SLIs/SLOs), backup, and DR standards across a heterogeneous fleet.

Experience operating real-time OLAP/analytics engines (e.g., Apache Doris, ClickHouse, StarRocks) at scale.

Proficiency in Mandarin (spoken and written), to support coordination with local Ali Cloud teams and regional vendors/partners.

Contributions to open-source database projects or internal data-platform tooling.