Machine Learning Engineer - Visual Agents - Special Projects

Cupertino, California, United States$129,300 - $225,3002+ years

Apple is where individual imaginations gather together, committing to the values that lead to great work. Every new product we build, service we create, or experience we deliver is the result of us making each other’s ideas stronger. The diversity of our people and their thinking inspires the innovation that runs through everything we do. When we bring everybody in, we can do the best work of our lives. Here, you’ll do more than join something — you’ll add something.

The Special Projects team at Apple is developing novel experiences powered by state-of-the-art agentic vision-language models that incorporate visual context into conversational interaction. We are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to help us build, fine-tune, and rigorously evaluate these systems. A successful candidate has hands-on experience with vision-language models, knows how to translate ambiguous product requirements into measurable evaluation criteria, and is excited to work at the intersection of multimodal modeling and agentic AI.

Build and evaluate vision-language agents that perceive real-world scenes and incorporate that context into conversational models
Curate, annotate, and build multimodal datasets to support model training and evaluation
Develop automated evaluation pipelines including LLM-as-judge frameworks, human evaluation protocols, and domain-specific benchmarks
Fine-tune Large Language Models (LLMs) and Visual-Language Models (VLMs) to improve performance for specific use cases
Work closely with other ML Researchers to define evaluation criteria and methodology to systematically evaluate foundation models
Design controlled experiments to measure model capabilities, identify failure modes, and drive iterative model improvements
Conduct robust statistical analysis to identify model deficiencies and failure modes and performance gaps.

BA or Master’s degree in Computer Science or Machine Learning
2+ years of hands-on experience building and evaluating generative AI or multimodal models
Experience working with vision-language models or multimodal systems
Proficiency in Python and ML frameworks (Pytorch or Tensorflow)

PhD in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Statistics, or other STEM field
Prior industry internship or research experience applying ML to product use cases
Experience with video understanding, temporal reasoning, or activity recognition
Familiarity with agentic system design including tool use, grounding, or perceive-act loops
Experience building or working with large-scale multimodal data and annotation pipelines
Proficiency in training, fine-tuning, and evaluation of foundation models and frameworks
Publications or technical presentations in Machine Learning journals or conferences
Excellent communication skills and cross functional collaboration

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 $129,300 and $225,300, 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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