Job description

You'll lead the architecture and evolution of the distributed services that power Apple Card and Savings, while staying hands-on in code and operations. You'll be given the flexibility to drive creative solutions, the support of a talented and driven team, and the autonomy and responsibility to take full ownership of critical systems. Our team operates as DevOps: we build what we run. You'll shape the architecture of our platform through deep experience operating, monitoring, and supporting it on call, and you'll set the bar for how we ship and run software — safe, progressive releases, clear service level objectives, and automation over manual toil. You'll lead large, multi-quarter efforts — including complex integrations with financial institution and payment network partners and other Apple services — from conception through production, with reliability and customer trust as non-negotiables. As a technical leader, you'll drive technical discussions across teams and organizations, write specifications, represent Apple in technical discussions with external partners, review code and designs, mentor senior engineers, and raise the engineering bar for the team. Success in this role requires strong self-motivation, crisp and clear communication, a highly collaborative approach, and the ability to define and influence engineering strategy well beyond your own team. A demonstrated track record of architecting, building, and operating mission-critical distributed systems at large scale, while remaining hands-on in code. Deep understanding of distributed systems trade-offs in consistency, latency, and throughput, and of data correctness patterns (e.g. idempotency, exactly-once processing, reconciliation). Expert hands-on software development skills in Kotlin or Java. Extensive operational experience: leading incident response, defining service level objectives (SLOs), and turning operational learnings into architectural improvements. A track record of leading complex, cross-team projects from conception to production — including large migrations or platform changes — and driving consensus with diverse audiences such as global teams and external partners. A testing-first approach to engineering: designing systems for testability from the outset, writing tests as an integral part of development, and defining testing strategy (unit, integration, contract, end-to-end) for complex services. No formal degree is required. What matters most is your mindset, your initiative, and your demonstrated ability to apply advanced skills to real-world applications. Experience using generative AI tools throughout the software development lifecycle to produce high-quality software. Deep expertise with Spring and with high-volume REST and/or gRPC services (server-to-server or mobile client facing). Experience in payments, banking, or other regulated financial domains, including leading integrations with external financial partners and designing within compliance, consumer-protection, and privacy requirements (e.g. change management, separation of duties, PCI). Experience architecting containerized, cloud-native applications (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, AWS) designed for multi-region resilience, failover, graceful degradation, and self-healing, and validated through load and failure testing. Experience designing CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and progressive release strategies (e.g. canary deployments, feature flags, automated rollback). Experience defining observability strategy (e.g. Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry), including business-level monitoring and high-quality alerts that detect issues before customers or partners do. Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging (e.g. Kafka or equivalent event streaming) and optimizing SQL/NoSQL databases for scale (e.g. Aurora, DynamoDB). A strong understanding of security, privacy, and cryptography for protecting sensitive customer and financial data (e.g. mTLS, PKI and certificate lifecycle management, JWT).

Requirements

Must-haves

A demonstrated track record of architecting, building, and operating mission-critical distributed systems at large scale, while remaining hands-on in code.
Deep understanding of distributed systems trade-offs in consistency, latency, and throughput, and of data correctness patterns (e.g. idempotency, exactly-once processing, reconciliation).
Expert hands-on software development skills in Kotlin or Java.
Extensive operational experience: leading incident response, defining service level objectives (SLOs), and turning operational learnings into architectural improvements.
No formal degree is required. What matters most is your mindset, your initiative, and your demonstrated ability to apply advanced skills to real-world applications.
Experience using generative AI tools throughout the software development lifecycle to produce high-quality software.
Deep expertise with Spring and with high-volume REST and/or gRPC services (server-to-server or mobile client facing).
Experience designing CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and progressive release strategies (e.g. canary deployments, feature flags, automated rollback).
Experience defining observability strategy (e.g. Datadog, Splunk, OpenTelemetry), including business-level monitoring and high-quality alerts that detect issues before customers or partners do.
Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging (e.g. Kafka or equivalent event streaming) and optimizing SQL/NoSQL databases for scale (e.g. Aurora, DynamoDB).
A strong understanding of security, privacy, and cryptography for protecting sensitive customer and financial data (e.g. mTLS, PKI and certificate lifecycle management, JWT).

Nice-to-haves

None flagged.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

kotlinjavaairestdockerkubernetesawsci/cdsql

Platform: apple
Effort: medium

Benefits

Benefits detected in the listing.

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