Staff / Sr. ML Engineer, Web Indexing

We’re looking for an ML Engineer to help build and scale the indexing infrastructure powering web and image search. The team runs both petabyte-scale offline batch pipelines and near-real-time indexing systems that turn web documents, images, and metadata into production-ready indexes.

We work across distributed computing, data processing, and storage, while partnering with crawling, ranking, ML, retrieval, and infrastructure teams to shape the long-term indexing strategy. This is a cross-functional role requiring strong technical depth, organizational influence, and the ability to drive complex, multi-team initiatives.

Description

You’ll own both technical direction and execution for two core systems: large-scale offline indexing (distributed pipelines processing petabytes of content into production indexes) and fresh/near-real-time indexing (low-latency propagation of new or updated content). Responsibilities span architecture, scalability, reliability, and efficiency across billions of documents and images.

Success requires close collaboration across teams to resolve dependencies, make architecture tradeoffs, and drive large programs to completion, while acting as a key liaison to senior leadership on strategy, risks, and resourcing.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a team building large-scale web and image indexing infrastructure
• Own architecture and execution for both offline batch pipelines and near-real-time indexing systems
• Drive improvements in freshness, throughput, scalability, reliability, and efficiency
• Enable rapid experimentation for search quality and ML teams introducing new signals
• Build strong cross-team partnerships (crawling, ranking, ML, storage, serving) and align on architecture and delivery milestones
• Represent the indexing org in leadership reviews, communicating strategy, progress, and tradeoffs
• Recruit and develop engineers, fostering a culture of ownership and technical excellence

Minimum Qualifications

• Significant experience building large-scale distributed systems or data infrastructure
• Engineering management experience leading software teams
• Strong grasp of distributed systems, large-scale data processing, and storage
• Experience with distributed batch processing (e.g., MapReduce-style models)
• Track record leading multi-team technical initiatives and influencing without direct authority
• Strong communication skills for technical topics with senior leadership
• BS in CS or related field, or equivalent experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with batch/streaming frameworks (Spark, Beam, Flink, Kafka, etc.)
• Experience with distributed storage systems (Bigtable, HBase, Cassandra)
• Background in search, information retrieval, or large-scale content processing
• Experience with image processing, computer vision, or multimodal systems
• Experience optimizing distributed systems for cost, latency, and throughput
• Experience driving cross-org programs and presenting strategy to executive leadership
• Track record developing senior engineers into technical leadership roles
• Pay & Benefits

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 $216,200 and $324,800, 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.