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The AI, Search & Knowledge Platforms team builds amazing products and services for Apple's customers while serving as a foundational partner to teams across Apple. The team delivers world-class AI, search, and knowledge systems powering Siri, Apple Intelligence, Safari, and iMessage, and operates the foundational platforms and infrastructure that keep these intelligent experiences running at hyperscale.
We are seeking an execution-focused and collaborative Machine Learning Manager to lead our team. In this role, you will be accountable for delivering advanced world knowledge services that are fast, scalable, helpful, and highly reliable to serve user needs, particularly for Siri and other core products. You will guide your team and collaborate with global research, platform, and product teams to blend modern Large Language Models (LLMs) with robust software engineering to deliver seamless, production-grade solutions that solve real customer problems.
Description
This position offers an opportunity to shape the landscape of Apple Intelligence at a critical moment in the AI field. We are looking for a leader who champions Customer Focus, Collaboration, and Accountability to drive meaningful product impact. In this role, you will lead a hybrid team of machine learning engineers and backend software developers. Your focus will be not only on the technical capabilities of modern LLMs and ML, but also on how these technologies integrate into Apple's server stack to deliver real value to users. You will lead your team to understand user needs deeply, actively respond to user feedback, continuously iterate to improve service quality, and innovate to enrich people's lives. As a manager, your team's success and growth is your number one priority. You will foster an inclusive environment built on open discussion and psychological safety, inspiring your team to take courageous technical risks. By recognizing achievements and connecting your engineers to the broader impact of their work, you will help them hold themselves to the highest Apple standards of craftsmanship. You are a hands-on, detail-oriented leader who is able to drive both your team and advanced AI agents to deliver exceptional product outcomes. You will act as a key collaborator across globally distributed organizations, bridging local initiatives with global platform, product, and research teams to deliver uniquely Apple experiences.
Responsibilities
Customer Focus: Ensure every product decision puts the customer first. Deeply understand user needs to build AI services that are simple, privacy-friendly, secure, and highly reliable. Translate these insights into measurable metrics and engineering roadmaps. Hybrid LLM & Server Stack: Lead the team in designing, building, and optimizing high-performance server-side architectures and APIs. Advocate for a hybrid approach that integrates state-of-the-art LLMs into robust, low-latency, and highly-scalable microservices. AI, Search & Agentic Systems: Drive R&D and champion new ideas for LLM-based question answering, advanced search engines, and agentic workflows (enabling AI systems to understand user intent, reason, and drive actions to complete tasks on behalf of the user). Accountability & Operational Excellence: Take full ownership of service quality, availability, latency, and compute efficiency. Foster a culture of deep accountability—ensuring we do what we say we will do, and never shipping products before they are truly ready. Execution & Detail Focus: Lead with a hands-on, highly detail-oriented mindset. Drive both engineering teams and advanced AI agents to deliver real-world production value, maintaining relentless attention to detail across all deliverables. Productivity & Impact Transformation: Accelerate team productivity and amplify impact by integrating advanced AI capabilities and modern engineering workflows into daily operations. People Leadership & Collaboration: Build a high-performing team and develop the next generation of technical talent. Leverage the breadth of Apple by inviting cross-functional experts to the table, creating space for diverse perspectives, and working together to deliver.
Minimum Qualifications
10+ years of professional experience building hybrid systems that blend robust software engineering with machine learning, including 5+ years of technical leadership or engineering management experience. Proficient in designing, building, and maintaining scalable, high-throughput, and highly reliable backend systems in modern languages (e.g., Python, Go, Java, or C++). Strong practical understanding of how to integrate modern ML frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Jax) and LLMs into production server pipelines to build smart capabilities (e.g., retrieval-augmented generation, intent classification). Proven track record of leveraging telemetry, behavioral data, and user feedback to shape engineering roadmaps and drive product evolution. Extensive experience working in a multi-lingual work environment, fostering an open and inclusive culture, and leading cross-cultural communications with globally distributed teams. Fluent in both English and Mandarin (written and verbal).
Preferred Qualifications
M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, or related technical field. Practical experience in designing, building, and deploying real-world AI agents, multi-agent orchestration frameworks, or task-oriented autonomous systems. Experience in building or operating search engines, information retrieval platforms, or natural language understanding systems at scale.
Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity, and thus we treat all applicants fairly and equally. Apple is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with physical and mental disabilities.
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