Software Engineer, Early Career Backend/Data

Summary

At Apple, we believe in the power of technology to enrich people's lives. Everything we build is designed to empower people, including our advertising platform. We deliver ads in a way that benefits both customers and advertisers — helping people discover content, supporting creators, and protecting and respecting everyone’s privacy.

Our technology makes advertising possible on the App Store, Apple News, Stocks, and Apple TV. We help developers and marketers of all sizes drive app discovery across the App Store. Our display ads on Apple News and Stocks let advertisers promote their products alongside trusted content from the world’s best journalists. Sponsorship integrations and experiences in live sports on Apple TV help advertisers connect with passionate fans. Everything we do is with the unwavering commitment to privacy you expect from Apple. Because when advertising is done right, it benefits everyone!

Description

Apple's Ads Engineering team builds ad tech the Apple way—privacy-preserving, user-centric, and built to scale. Our infrastructure supports massive real-time demand with low latency, precision, and global reach. Our work spans distributed systems, large-scale data infrastructure, LLMs, and Generative AI. We design and build best of breed systems for dealing with our complex and ever-growing platform needs that help deliver highly optimized advertising content to consumers.

We are excited to open applications for early-career Software Engineer, Early Career Backend/Data in Cupertino (CA), Austin (TX), and New York (NY). This shared hiring process is designed to identify strong entry-level talent for our backend and data engineering teams. Candidates will complete a common interview process focused on core fundamentals and programming ability. Those who advance will then enter a team-matching phase, where they’ll be aligned with a specific team based on skills, interests, and business needs.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the design, implementation, and testing of backend services and data pipelines.
• Write clean, reliable, and efficient code in languages such as Java, Scala, or C++.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Product Management, Data, SRE, etc. to design and implement systems that can handle a variety of Ads use cases.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Product, Data, SRE, etc.) to support features from prototype to production.
• Participate in code reviews, debugging, and performance tuning.
• Learn best practices for building systems that are scalable, secure, and low-latency.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (Master’s a plus).
• At least 1 year of relevant experience (including internships, research, or equivalent projects).
• Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, problem solving).
• Programming experience with Java, Scala, C++, or a similar language.
• Familiarity with cloud environments (AWS, GCP, or equivalent).
• Strong problem solving and debugging skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Proficiency in Java.
• Prior internship or academic project experience with backend distributed systems or data processing (e.g., Kafka, Spark, Flink).
• Exposure to relational and/or non-relational databases.
• Knowledge of building or maintaining services in a cloud environment.
• Passion for learning, growth, and collaboration in a fast-paced environment.
• Prior experience in advertising industry is a plus.
• Prior experience in advertising technology is a plus, but not required.

Key skills/competency

• Backend Development
• Data Pipelines
• Distributed Systems
• Java/Scala/C++ Programming
• Algorithms & Data Structures
• Problem Solving
• Cloud Computing (AWS/GCP)
• System Design
• Code Review
• Privacy-preserving Design