Compute Runtime Software Engineer
Apple· Consumer Technology· Jul 24, 2026 · 3mo agoPosted 95 days ago
Seattle, Washington, United States
In office
Full-time
Mid
$142K–$263K
3+ years exp
Before you apply
Ghost Signal:
Open since July 24, 2026 — 95 days, and still accepting applications.
Job description
We build the container runtime technology that Apple's own services and developers depend on. Our systems engineers develop virtualization-based runtimes — using macOS virtualization and VMM solutions like Cloud Hypervisor and sandboxed container solutions — to run Virtual Machines and Linux Containers across our data center and Apple platforms, with a relentless focus on privacy, security, and performance. This is a foundational systems team: we work at the level of kernel and container security, image distribution, filesystems, and virtualization. Much of this work is greenfield, solving problems unique to running on Apple's own hardware in the data center, at a scale and with constraints the rest of the industry hasn't had to solve for. Beyond the datacenter, we maintain Apple Container, our open source desktop tooling that lets developers around the world run containers natively on macOS.
We're looking for a strong foundation in systems programming and a genuine curiosity about how containers and virtualization work under the hood, paired with the drive to learn quickly on a high-paced, experienced team.
We love open source and collaboration at every level.
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent related experience.
At least 3+ years of Software design and development experience in infrastructure engineering (compute, storage and network virtualization), containerization, or systems programming, with strong fundamentals
Programming proficiency in C, C++, Swift or Go
Familiarity with some or all of the following topics: Linux containerization, Linux filesystems, Image distribution, Content storage, Kernel and container security
Ability to contribute to design docs and technical discussions, and to write clear, well-tested code
Experience with Linux system programming
Experience participating in code review, giving and receiving feedback on correctness and test coverage
Exposure to writing tests for regression prevention or negative-case validation
Development experience in one or more of: Cloud security, Container / Linux Kernel security and API security
Experience troubleshooting and diving into metrics to identify resource contention and bottlenecks
Experience designing benchmarks and load tests to characterize performance and establish scalability models
Development experience with container orchestration systems such as Docker, Kubernetes or Mesos is a plus
Development experience with virtualization and container technologies such as Apple Container, Kata, Firecracker, or KubeVirt is a plus
Systems programming experience on Darwin with Swift is a plus
Programming system virtualization based on Cloud Hypervisor, rust-vmm, macOS Virtualization Framework, QEMU, or KVM is a plus
Understanding of various shared networked storage solutions (iSCSI, NFS, cluster file systems) is a plus
Application prep
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Keywords to mirror
restswiftgoapidockerkubernetesrust
- Platform
- apple
- Effort
- medium