Senior Software Engineer (SDET), Infrastructure Services

Summary

Do you want to help build some of the largest and most consequential enterprise and customer technology systems in the world? Join Apple's Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) organization. IS&T is the engine behind everything Apple does for customers and for the people who build for them. It's Apple's central nervous system. Supporting 2.5 billion active Apple devices, processing billions of secure transactions, and keeping the technology that defines modern life running flawlessly, IS&T makes the impossible feel effortless.

Do you love building solutions to handle global complexity and immense scale? Imagine what you could do here.

Infrastructure Services is part of IS&T and the foundation of Apple's global network operations, managing data center equipment and systems to deliver compute, storage, and networking services for teams across Apple, including its internal developer community. From individual facilities to a worldwide network, Infrastructure Services ensures the technology underneath everything works without question.

Description

As a Senior SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) with deep software engineering expertise and a strong grounding in cloud networking, you will architect, build, and scale a test automation platform that empowers developers to write end to end functional tests for the virtual networking layer of Apple's private cloud platforms. This is a software engineering role at its core: you'll design and ship production-grade frameworks, libraries, and developer tooling that make testing a first-class part of the engineering workflow. You'll spend roughly half your time engineering the automation platform itself (framework architecture, CI/CD integration, test infrastructure, developer experience) and the other half writing code, driving test strategy, and implementing automated test cases against the virtual networking stack in close partnership with developers.

Responsibilities

Architect and implement scalable frameworks for test coverage, test data management, and native CI/CD integration, treating the automation platform as a production software system with its own design standards, APIs, and versioning strategy
Partner closely with cross-functional teams including cloud network engineers, SREs, and platform architects to co-design testable interfaces and embed test coverage directly into the architecture of evolving networking features
Build automated triage and diagnostics tooling to accelerate root cause analysis of test failures, and work directly with development teams to debug, reproduce, and resolve defects surfaced through the automation suite
Design and engineer systems for test result reporting, observability, and flaky test detection, applying software engineering rigor (metrics, alerting, self-healing tests) to improve platform reliability and developer trust
Write and present technical design docs and engineering proposals for automation architecture and test strategy, driving cross-team alignment on decisions that significantly influence team and organizational success
Maintain clear, code-adjacent documentation (READMEs, API references, framework guides) for the automation platform to drive self-service adoption and onboarding across developer teams

Minimum Qualifications

Hands-on software engineering experience designing and building test frameworks, harnesses, or automation platforms (not just authoring individual test cases), spanning unit, integration, and end to end testing layers
Strong proficiency in one or more programming languages commonly used for building automation tooling (Go, Python), with the ability to write production-quality, maintainable code rather than scripts
Hands-on experience designing API contracts and working across interface technologies (JSON, ProtoBuf, REST, RPC, XML, etc.) to build testable, well-abstracted systems
Experience with Kubernetes, OpenStack, system virtualization, and infrastructure as code, with the ability to build and operate infrastructure, not just test against it
Strong communication skills with the ability to articulate architecture decisions, technical tradeoffs, test strategy, and results to both technical and non-technical audiences
Familiarity with observability systems (metrics, logging, tracing), including the ability to instrument and build observability into automation tooling itself, not just consume it for test validation and debugging

Preferred Qualifications

5+ years of relevant industry experience in software engineering
Prior experience building developer-facing testing tools or platforms
Experience with scale, performance and resiliency testing in networked/cloud environments
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field

Pay & Benefits — San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States

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 $184,700 and $324,800, 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

Note: Apple benefit, compensation and employee stock programs are subject to eligibility requirements and other terms of the applicable plan or program.

Application Deadline

Apple accepts applications to this posting on an ongoing basis.