ASE - Engineering Program Manager, Search and Answer Relevance

Summary

Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. And we actively leverage the latest breaking technologies for opportunities to delight our users in their daily lives. Do you love taking on challenges that create a positive impact? Are you passionate about empowering many ground-breaking intelligent experiences to be made? The Apple AIML org is building groundbreaking technology...and we are looking for people like you!

We’re looking for a Engineering Program Manager with a strong track record of delivering search products and world knowledge answering features using disruptive technologies upon aggressive timeline. The program manager will lead a large cross functional project to help improve Apple’s over 1 billion customers experience. The role will work with world level deep learning and AI engineers applying cutting edge AI technologies including Large Language Models to enable exciting new user experiences and continue improving relevance metrics and quality for shipped features.

Description

As an Engineering Program Manager, you’ll sit at the center of complex, high-impact initiatives uniting cross-functional teams around a shared vision and turning ambitious ideas into clear, executable plans. You’ll influence decisions, manage schedules, dependencies, risks, and critical paths, and provide senior leaders with timely, objective insight into program health. By combining quantitative data, qualitative feedback, and internal dogfooding, you’ll advocate for exceptional relevance, quality, and user experience while helping teams continuously improve how they operate and deliver. For Search Experimentation, you’ll also lead experiment prioritization, manage testing budgets, and drive executive ship-room discussions that shape critical product-launch decisions.

Responsibilities

Drive consensus across multiple groups with varying opinions & needs. Influence entire teams around a common purpose and drive conference on the plan of execution
Create and manage project schedules with clear dependencies, critical path and systematic methodology to communicate status
Proactively identify and manage risks, close gaps and and re-plan as needed
Keep teams on critical path with efforts to minimize distractions
Provide clear, timely and objective communication, including regular program status updates and one-off reviews as needed to executive team
Keep an eye on any potential gaps across dependency teams and proactively promote regular communications on common source of truth
Proactive and regular insurance of alignments across all stake holder teams when new factors arise
Lead measurements to help team understand and measure success, including relevance, quality, usage scale and other key KPIs
Advocate for user and company values when leading team to convergence on key open questions
Lead early feedback collection from internal dogfooding during feature convergence, drive team to address feedback in feature iterations
Advocate for relevance, quality and user experience, using both quantitative and qualitative data
Reflect on how the team operates, proactively propose and implement new ways to enable more effective processes & delivery of results

Minimum Qualifications

3+ years of experience in driving large scale program building machine learning powered products
Strong ability to deal with ambiguities, drive disambiguation and clarities, shepherd multiple teams to meet aggressive timeline
Excellent program management skills including program structuring and managing multiple work streams interdependently
Solid knowledge of technical system architecture and systems design tradeoffs
Strong problem-solving skills with attention to details
Strategic and results driven mindset focusing on driving what matters
Self-motivated and proactive, with demonstrated creative and critical thinking capabilities required to forge a path to success
Strong leadership skills, including conflict resolution, negotiation, courage to take risks when needed
Strong ability to communicate abstract ideas clearly, manage comprehensive yet succinct project status update to all levels of audience, both verbally and in written forms
Bachelors in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning or related field or equivalent work experience

Preferred Qualifications

Experience in delivery search and generative answer relevance metrics and quality improvements in large scale products.
Experience orchestrating the delivery of multiple significant client/server software products requiring large organizations (100+) across teams to execute
Strong adaptability and agility in making adjustments to project strategy and plan with evolving situations
Computer Science postgraduate degrees or MBA

Pay & Benefits — Seattle, Washington, 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 $137,500 and $250,700, 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.

Pay & Benefits — Santa Clara, 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 $144,600 and $263,800, 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.