Summary
The technologies within Apple's Core Location are fundamental in enabling location-aware experiences for users across all platforms. Our customers rely on fast and accurate location for many of their most important daily needs, and they trust us with some of the most sensitive data their devices can produce. As a Senior Systems Software Engineer within the Location Team, you will help shape how our systems come together across hardware, firmware, and software, and you will build them yourself. If you are an experienced engineer who wants to design a system and then write the code that brings it to life, we may be the team for you.
Description
Here at Apple, we build devices and services that enrich our customers' lives. In the location technologies group, we help people connect: with each other and with our planet. We reach more than a billion people. We help them find their way, and we help them find each other. Every single day, our customers use location services, so what we do and how we do it makes a difference. Join our team, and we'll help you do the best work of your life.
We are looking for an experienced engineer to work on systems that bring together many moving parts. Inertial sensors, visual sensors, wireless radios such as UWB, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi, GNSS, and on-device processing all come together here, and much of what these systems do emerges from the interaction between those pieces rather than from any one of them alone. Understanding that interaction is most of the work, and it is what makes the problems here genuinely interesting.
The role has two sides, and we mean both of them equally. You will help decide how a system is put together: where functionality should live, how the components talk to each other, and what we trade away to get what we need. You will also be the one who builds it, writing production code, bringing up new hardware, and chasing down the failures that only appear on real devices. We have found that these two things belong together. The best designs come from people who have built the system, and the best implementations come from people who understand the whole of it.
Location is among the most sensitive data a device can produce, and our customers trust us with it. Privacy and security are not something we review at the end. They shape where data is processed, how much of it we collect, whatever leaves the device, and how we protect it at every layer, and you will carry those questions through your own designs and your own code.
Responsibilities
Help define the architecture of multi-component location systems spanning hardware, firmware, and software, and implement the interfaces that hold them together
Write, review, and maintain production-quality code in C++, Objective-C, and Swift for systems that ship to our customers
Design and implement how inertial, visual, and wireless sensing come together into a system that behaves as one
Integrate and bring up new hardware and software components, working through the problems that only surface on real devices
Weigh the tradeoffs between accuracy, latency, power, memory, and reliability, and bring partner teams along with your reasoning
Debug complex issues across the full stack, where the root cause could sit anywhere from the sensor to the application
Take new technologies from early prototype through evaluation and into production, fusing them with our existing capabilities
Collaborate with silicon, hardware, firmware, and algorithms teams from first concept through shipping
Build the tooling and instrumentation that let us characterize how a system really behaves, with data rather than intuition
Participate in evaluating new signals and technologies as our platforms continue to evolve
Minimum Qualifications
At least 7 years of hands-on C++ or Objective-C programming experience, or in a comparable modern systems language such as Rust, with coding central to your day-to-day work
Experience designing and implementing complex systems built from multiple hardware and software components with tight interaction between them
Deep experience at the hardware/software boundary: sensors, radios, cameras, firmware interfaces, drivers, or timing and synchronization
A track record of taking a system from concept to production, including integration and bring-up you performed yourself
Know how to debug complex systems where the root cause is not localized
Deep understanding of software design paradigms and software development best practices
Excellent collaboration and communication skills
A passion for programming and building things
BSc in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent experience. MSc in a relevant field a plus.
Preferred Qualifications
Experience with location, navigation, sensor fusion, or wireless positioning technologies
Experience integrating and shipping visual sensing systems such as visual-inertial odometry or SLAM on real devices, including camera calibration and pipeline integration
Experience with real-time or resource-constrained systems
Experience with data analysis and results dashboards
iOS, macOS, application, and/or Unix system development
Swift programming experience
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Role Number: 200682345-0865
