Software Development Engineer

Software Development Engineer

Summary

The Insight team runs one of Apple's most critical Big Data ecosystems — an exabyte-scale, highly-available infrastructure that underpins manufacturing operations for every Apple product, globally. Every iPhone, iPad, and Mac has touched our systems.
We advance technology by relying on each other's strengths and skills to build something bigger than ourselves. For this reason, team culture is central to our values. We value social skills and integrity as much as technical craft.
We are looking for an experienced full-stack engineer who is equally comfortable building polished frontend experiences and rock-solid, high-throughput backend services. You'll help shape the systems and interfaces our global manufacturing engineering teams rely on every day.

Description

You will design, build, and operate full-stack features and distributed backend services within a very large-scale, highly available Big Data ecosystem supporting exabyte-level data with sustained, rapid growth.
Design, build, and operate full-stack features spanning modern frontends (React, Next.js, TypeScript) and backend microservices using Java or other languages common in today's microservices ecosystem (Kotlin, Go, C#/.NET, Node.js/TypeScript, or Rust).
Build and operate high-throughput, low-latency distributed services with tight SLA requirements as part of the Insight Big Data ecosystem.
Design and implement scalable backend services using Java, Python, Golang, or Scala.
Work with big data technologies such as Kafka, AWS S3, Apache Iceberg, Parquet, Avro, and Druid to build and operate resilient data pipelines and services.
Deploy and operate services in container-orchestrated, large-scale cloud environments (e.g., Kubernetes).
Design efficient relational data models and write high-performance SQL — including ER diagram design, complex joins, indexing strategies, and query optimization — to support large-scale reporting and analytics workloads.
Collaborate with cross-functional engineering teams across Apple's global manufacturing services, communicating effectively across time zones and cultures.

Preferred Qualifications

AI / agentic tooling at scale: Experience productionizing AI agents, MCP servers, or LLM-driven tools beyond prototypes — including tool-calling integrations, agent orchestration, and evaluation of agentic workflows in a production engineering environment.
Leadership & mentorship: Experience leading a small team within your organization and/or independently owning and driving an engineering project end-to-end from design through delivery, along with the ability to mentor engineers and drive technical design discussions across frontend and backend concerns.
Foundations & breadth: BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience; product and infra breadth beyond a single narrow area.

Minimum Qualifications

3+ years of software engineering experience with a focus on backend or distributed systems.
Strong programming skills in one or more of: Java, Python, Golang, or Scala
Proficiency with frontend technologies such as React, Next.js, and TypeScript, and experience building full-stack applications.
Hands-on experience building and operating high-throughput, low-latency distributed services with tight SLA requirements.
Experience with big data technologies such as Kafka, AWS S3, Apache Iceberg, Parquet, Avro, Druid, Big Table or similar.
Experience with container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes) and operating services in large-scale cloud environments.
Strong SQL skills — including ER diagram design and interpretation, writing complex join queries, schema/data modeling, indexing strategies, and query performance optimization at scale.
Hands-on experience and working knowledge of building AI-related systems — such as MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, AI agents, agentic workflows, or LLM-powered tools/integrations — for real engineering use cases.
Experience in mentoring juniors and leading a project.

Experience Level

Senior Level