Staff Machine Learning Research Engineer, App Store Search

Seattle, Washington, United StatesSenior$175,000 - $308,5003+ years

The Apple Services Engineering (ASE) team is one of the most exciting examples of Apple’s long-held passion for combining art and technology. People here create the experiences loved by users across App Store, Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and Apple Books. The scale is massive delivering content and entertainment in over 35 languages to more than 150 countries, while meeting Apple’s high bar on quality and performance. The team is responsible for building secure, robust, end-to-end solutions across server and client to solve challenging problems. Thanks to Apple’s unique integration of hardware, software, and services, engineers here work with a single unified vision of deep commitment to strengthening Apple’s core principles such as customer focus, privacy, and relentless innovation. Although services are a bigger part of Apple’s business than ever before, these teams remain small, nimble, and cross-functional, offering an opportunity to work with passionate people, contribute ideas, and ship innovative software. Here, you’ll do more than just join a team — you’ll be creating positive impact in people’s lives.

The ASE Search team is a vital part of Apple ecosystem, powering search for App Store, Apple Music, Apple TV, Podcasts, Books, iTunes and more, on a wide set of platforms such as iOS, macOS, tvOS, watchOS, Safari, and 3rd party devices. Driven by passion for the extraordinary rather than the easy, our team of problem solvers, is dedicated to helping users discover media and content in exciting new ways. We are looking for extraordinary and motivated machine learning researchers and engineers to join us in our journey. As a Senior/Staff Machine Learning Research on the ASE Search team, you will lead the design and development of next-generation search and conversational discovery features for Apple's ground breaking devices and platforms.

Build next-gen experiences influencing the way people search & discover on Apple devices worldwide.
Drive innovation by staying at the forefront of research and applying it to complex problems with rigor and principled thinking.
Architect foundational systems across multiple surface areas — retrieval, ranking, indexing, query and document understanding, and agentic/RAG-based capabilities.
Define and drive the technical roadmap for search ML capabilities, aligning short-term execution with long-term strategic goals.
Partner with engineers, researchers, product, and platform teams to identify high-impact opportunities and deliver robust solutions.
Own the ML lifecycle end-to-end — from formulating objectives and defining data and training strategies through production integration.
Build components in large-scale distributed backend systems using high-performance programming languages such as Go, Java, Python, and Scala.
Present key technical and novel research work in public forums.
Design A/B experiments with well-defined KPIs to objectively measure improvements.
Design testing, monitoring, and alerting solutions to maintain high operational SLAs for production systems.
Mentor engineers and raise the bar on ML best practices, code quality, and system design.

3+ years of relevant industry experience building large-scale ML & data systems
Familiarity with search or recommendation systems, conversational engines, or related domains
Strong knowledge of generative AI systems including Large Language Models, Transformers, Reinforcement Learning, RAG, and agentic patterns such as ReAct, Chain-of-Thought, Tool Use, and Multi-Agent orchestration
Experience with one or more distributed ML training frameworks such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, Ray, or JAX, and inference engines like TensorRT or vLLM
Technical leader with exceptional communication skills and a track record of solving complex, ambiguous problems in a highly collaborative environment

MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related subject area
Proven ability to build & scale Search & Conversational systems, applying 7+ years of hand-on experience across the full product stack — including query understanding, semantic retrieval, multi-stage ranking, indexing, intent classification, and context-aware generation.
Deep expertise in Search & Conversational systems, bringing in 7+ years of hands-on experience building capabilities such as query understanding, retrieval, ranking, indexing, autocomplete, intent resolution, and context-aware generation across multiple domains.
Proficient in developing robust big data pipelines in Scala or Python using distributed processing frameworks like Apache Spark.
Familiarity with scalable, reliable distributed backend services including Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, and container orchestration
Familiarity with A/B experimentation and data-driven product development

At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $175,000 and $308,500, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.

Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple’s discretionary employee stock programs. Apple employees are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards, and can purchase Apple stock at a discount if voluntarily participating in Apple’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You’ll also receive benefits including: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and for formal education related to advancing your career at Apple, reimbursement for certain educational expenses — including tuition. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary bonuses or commission payments as well as relocation. Learn more about Apple Benefits

Note: Apple benefit, compensation and employee stock programs are subject to eligibility requirements and other terms of the applicable plan or program.

Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant

At Apple, we believe accessibility is a fundamental human right. You’ll find that idea reflected in everything here — in our culture, our benefits and our digital tools. By welcoming as many perspectives as possible, we help you build a career where you feel like you belong.

Learn about accessibility in Apple’s workplace

Learn about reasonable accommodations for job applicants

Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.

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