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Tools and Automations Lead, App Review
AppleCupertino, California, United StatesSenior$149,200 - $249,0007+ years
Apply Apps are changing the world and enriching people’s lives, driven by developers dedicated to creating extraordinary experiences that delight customers. Apple’s Worldwide Developer Relations team (WWDR) provides the services, resources and guidance that empowers the world’s most dynamic developer community to push the boundaries of innovation and bring the next big app ideas to Apple’s platforms for customers worldwide. WWDR also offers programs to help developers connect with experts, learn about the latest Apple tools and technologies, and adopt best practices to supercharge app development.
App Review operates at extraordinary scale, and the quality of that operation depends on the people, tooling, automation, and intelligence we build behind it. We are looking for a highly technical builder who treats App Review's process and policy application as a system to be designed — measured, refined, and continuously improved — and who is just as comfortable prototyping a solution themselves as they are defining the requirements that let our engineering partners build it to scale.
This is a hands-on role for someone who is equal parts engineer, systems thinker, and process designer — and a strong cross-functional collaborator. You will identify where review specialists, developers, and Apple are underserved by today's workflows, then design, prototype, and deliver the solutions that close those gaps, increasingly leveraging generative AI both as a capability we ship and as a tool we build with. Critically, you will know what to build yourself and what to hand to our platform and infrastructure partners — and you will make those partnerships succeed.
You will be the bridge between App Review's operational reality and the product, AI, and platform engineering capabilities that scale it — translating how review actually works into requirements those teams can build against, and translating what they ship back into tools specialists trust and use.
You will own the design and delivery of internal tooling and automation that supports the end-to-end App Review experience — for the specialists who do the work, the developers on the other side of it, and the policy and operational standards Apple holds. The mandate is broad, and so is the toolkit: where a manual workflow should be automated, where a decision needs better data in front of it, where a policy needs to be applied consistently at scale, you will define the solution and often build a working version of it.
Just as important is knowing where the line is. Durable, high-reliability infrastructure is built with our partners in Apple Services Engineering platform teams and the AIML platform organization — not around them. You will be the person who can prototype an idea convincingly, then translate it into clear, well-scoped requirements that enable those teams to build the production systems our operation depends on.
- Partner with App Review specialists, leadership, and policy stakeholders to understand how review actually happens, where it breaks down, and where automation or better interfaces would meaningfully improve quality, consistency, and throughput.
- Build prototypes and solutions directly — from a Swift app that integrates with a platform API to scripts that evaluate data or run a process-automation task — to prove value quickly and de-risk the larger investment.
- Work closely and credibly with Apple Services Engineering platform teams, AIML platform teams, and other cross-functional partners, defining clear technical requirements that enable them to build stable, reliable, production-grade infrastructure on our behalf.
- Make the right build-vs-partner call: own the lightweight, fast-moving, and exploratory work yourself, and route the systems that demand long-term reliability, scale, and operational ownership to the right engineering partners.
- Advance our automation and AI agenda — designing and deploying GenAI and agent-based solutions (LLMs, RAG, agents) that augment review, surface risk, and reduce manual effort. Build the prototype yourself; ship it where shipping it yourself is the right call.
- Make the AI build-vs-partner call deliberately: know when an off-the-shelf LLM call is enough, when a problem needs Apple's AIML platform teams behind it, and translate cleanly in both directions so each side can do its job well.
- Bring a strong sense of UX and workflow design: the tools you create or specify should be intuitive, fast, and trusted by the people who depend on them daily.
- Drive adoption, not just delivery. Sit with the specialists who use what you ship, watch where it falters, and iterate. A tool that isn't trusted and used isn't a solution.
- Define how success is measured, instrument your solutions, and iterate based on real usage and outcomes.
- Communicate designs, trade-offs, and results clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, including leadership and engineering partners.
- 7+ years of combined experience across software engineering, data engineering, solutions engineering, or technical product roles.
- Demonstrated ability to take a problem from ambiguous need to working solution — including building the prototype yourself, not only specifying it.
- Proven track record of effective cross-functional collaboration with platform or infrastructure engineering teams, including writing the requirements that enable partner teams to deliver.
- Strong proficiency in Python and modern data tooling; ability to build standalone solutions.
- Hands-on experience designing and deploying GenAI/agentic solutions (RAG, LLMs, agents) — and a tinkering mindset that stays current with what is actually shipping, not just what was state-of-the-art a year ago.
- Strong product instincts: an eye for UI/UX, workflow design, and the human factors that determine whether a tool gets used.
- Demonstrated ability to produce clear architectural diagrams and technical documentation for non-technical stakeholders.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience operating at the intersection of policy, operations, and engineering — building systems that apply rules and standards consistently, at scale.
- Familiarity with App Review, trust and safety, content moderation, or comparable operational review domains.
- Experience integrating with internal platform and AIML services, and a clear understanding of when to prototype versus when to invest in partner-built infrastructure.
- Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and written/verbal communication skills.
- Self-directed and proactive, with demonstrated creative and critical thinking; able to manage multiple efforts simultaneously.
- Strong cross-functional collaboration and influencing skills.