Principal Reliability Engineer Jobs in California

Cupertino, California, United States | Software and Services

At Apple, we believe that innovation flourishes in an environment where ideas are challenged, collaboration is encouraged, and technology is pushed to its limits. This environment is only possible when diverse minds come together, bringing unique perspectives and experiences. Our people and their ideas inspire innovation in everything we do. Imagine what you could accomplish here! Join Apple and help us make the world a better place.As a principal contributor and technical lead in our Apple Data Platform (ADP) SRE organization, you will apply SRE principles as you mentor and partner with our engineers and partner teams, ensuring large-scale analytics infrastructure runs reliably and efficiently. This role focuses on driving reliability standards, architectural consistency, and engineering excellence across peer SRE teams and partner engineering organizations — spanning Hadoop, HBase, Spark, Data Lakes, and Airflow ecosystems — through technical leadership, cross-functional alignment, and the development of platform-wide tooling, observability, and operational practices that raise the reliability bar for all of ADP. This role includes production on-call responsibilities.

Apple Service Engineering (ASE) teams build and scale the platforms and infrastructure behind many of Apple’s services — including iCloud, iTunes, Siri, and Maps. We are the foundation on which Apple’s software developers build the products that our customers love. We are looking for a passionate and dedicated Technical Lead to drive SRE standards and engineering excellence across the entire Apple Data Platform organization. The Apple Data Platform (ADP) SRE Technical Lead partners with multiple SRE and engineering teams across the data platform — including teams responsible for Hadoop and HBase infrastructure, Spark, S3-compatible storage, and Airflow-orchestrated pipelines. Rather than owning a single vertical, this role sets the technical direction for how reliability is practiced across ADP: defining SLOs, establishing architectural review processes, developing shared tooling and automation, and ensuring that SRE principles are applied consistently as the platform scales. You will be a force multiplier — making every team around you more effective.

• Serve as the SRE Technical Lead across ADP, partnering with vertical SRE teams and software engineering organizations to ensure reliability standards are consistently applied across the full data platform
• Define and drive adoption of SLO frameworks, error budget policies, and incident management practices across ADP services
• Provide architectural review and reliability guidance for new services and major platform changes, identifying risks and influencing design before they reach production
• Lead the development of shared observability, automation, and infrastructure-as-code tooling that benefits multiple ADP teams simultaneously
• Identify and eliminate systemic sources of toil and instability across the platform; advocate for and deliver platform-wide reliability improvements
• Mentor and grow SRE engineers across teams, establishing a culture of engineering excellence and continuous improvement
• Represent ADP SRE in cross-organizational forums, communicating technical strategy and reliability posture to ASE and Apple leadership
• Programming in Python and Golang, supported by Generative AI tooling, to accelerate development of mission-critical shared automation and tools
• Production on-call and incident management responsibilities, including leading response for high-severity cross-platform incidents

• BS/MS in Computer Science or equivalent
• 12+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, managing infrastructure and services at scale
• 5+ years of experience in technical leadership roles, with demonstrated ability to lead horizontally across teams without direct authority
• Broad expertise across the data platform stack: Hadoop (HDFS, YARN), HBase, Apache Spark, Data Lake architectures, S3-compatible storage solutions, and Apache Airflow
• History of defining and driving SLO/error budget frameworks and reliability practices across multiple teams or services
• Demonstrable programming skills to develop shared tooling, lead code reviews, and set engineering standards
• Strong written and verbal communication skills — able to present technical strategy to both engineers and leadership
• Advanced knowledge of Linux, networking, and distributed systems fundamentals

• 15+ years of experience in SRE or related work managing infrastructure at scale
• Experience with Ceph object storage operations
• Kubernetes cluster operations experience, particularly running stateful data workloads
• Experience with scale testing, disaster recovery, and capacity planning across distributed data systems
• Experience driving multi-year platform migrations or large-scale architectural transitions
• Ability to define the technical roadmap for a data platform organization and drive cross-functional alignment on architectural standards and best practices
• Background in data security, access control, or compliance-sensitive data environments

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 $181,100 and $318,400, 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

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 EOO 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