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Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Matching, Apple Ads

Apple

Cupertino, CAFull-timeSeen todaySeen in employer's feed today

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At a glance

Compensation
No compensation found
Location
Cupertino, CA
Schedule
Full-time
Work Authorization
Not specified

Olive lists jobs from US employers, including remote roles you can work from the United States.

Job overview

The Staff Machine Learning Engineer will develop algorithms for Apple Ads’ retrieval system, which matches relevant ads to users. The role owns algorithm ideation, development, testing, and productization, and works on complex retrieval problems while adhering to Apple’s privacy principles. The engineer will collaborate with cross-functional partners, review and contribute to research, present findings across the organization, and lead advanced techniques to improve the ad network.

Skills & qualifications

RequiredNice to have

Skills

Machine LearningNatural Language ProcessingInformation RetrievalSearchResearch ImplementationProduction CodingResearch Hypothesis DesignExperimental DesignOnline ExperimentationResearch ReviewDeep LearningLarge Language ModelsReinforcement LearningStatisticsForecastingOptimizationAgileTeamwork

Qualifications

7+ Years Machine Learning ExperienceMaster's or Equivalent ExperiencePhD or Equivalent Experience

Full job description

Weekly Hours: 40

Role Number: 200693171-0836

Summary

At Apple, we focus deeply on our customers’ experience. Apple Ads brings this same approach to advertising, helping people find exactly what they’re looking for and helping advertisers grow their businesses! Our technology powers ads and sponsorships across Apple Services, including the App Store, Apple News, and MLS Season Pass.

Everything we do is designed for trust, connection, and impact: We respect user privacy, integrate advertising thoughtfully into the experience, and deliver value for advertisers of all sizes—from small app developers to big, global brands. Because when advertising is done right, it benefits everyone!

You'll have the opportunity to develop models that improve our platform across the board, write production code to generate recommendations, work closely with business partners to help drive the development of new products as well as perform large scale and complex experiments to understand their effects. You'll drive strategic outcomes through substantial innovation in multiple fields by leading the development and application of advanced techniques and algorithms to improve our ad network.

You've, or will develop a deep understanding of the ad network behavior, and will work with product management and business leadership to prioritize an innovation roadmap across multiple technical domains. You'll lead the conception, development, and delivery of state of the art capabilities that differentiate our products and are core to our business. You should have experience developing and implementing machine learning algorithms, ideally within the ads space. You'll have an excellent understanding of scalable architectures and thrive working in Agile environments. The ability to be a good team player under tight deadline constraints is key to success.

Description

Matching at Ads is a critical component of our Ads funnel and responsible for ensuring that we are retrieving relevant and engaging Ads for our users. We are building the next generation of our retrieval systems to sustain the growth of the business for the future. We are looking for a Machine Learning Engineer that will develop the algorithms for our retrieval system.

In this role you will drive step-change improvements in our outcomes, impact our platform revenue and quality of our ads, and formulate approaches to greenfield product opportunities. You will own end-to-end the ideation, development, testing and productization of these algorithms. You will work with complex problems in the ads retrieval space, provide solution that adhere to Apple’s privacy principles, review and contribute to state of the art in research, work with a variety of cross functional teams to ensure the feasibility and robustness of delivering new capabilities. This role will work closely with organizational partners and be expected to present findings across the organization.

Minimum Qualifications

  • 7+ years of experience building machine learning capabilities across many different product areas at scale.

  • Proven experience in NLP, information retrieval and search.

  • Ability to apply and implement research concepts, ultimately in production quality code.

  • Experience defining clear, testable research hypotheses, including intended impact on the business.

  • Deep understanding of design of experiments, online experimentation approaches, preferably at scale.

  • Experience contributing and/or reviewing research for top conferences and publications.

  • Master's, or equivalent experience, in NLP, Machine Learning, Statistics, Forecasting, Optimization, Reinforcement Learning or related field with experience building production systems or have equivalent experience working with large data science / machine learning projects in industry.

Preferred Qualifications

  • PhD, or equivalent experience, in NLP, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Large Language Model, Reinforcement Learning or related field with experience building production systems or have equivalent experience working with large data science / machine learning projects in industry.

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.

How this job compares

Set against the 6,127 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 6, 2026.

Pay
  • This postingNot listed
  • California median$177–262K/yr1,407 salary ranges
  • California median$48–74/hr36 hourly ranges
Openings
Olive Jobs lists 1,880 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs in California and 6,127 across the US. 8% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
Hiring the most in California
Experience
This posting asks for at least 7 years of experience; Machine Learning Engineer postings that state a minimum ask for 5 years at the median (4,896 postings).
Education
2,195 of the 6,127 open Machine Learning Engineer jobs (36%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.

Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 6, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.

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