Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Answers, Search & Knowledge Platforms

Santa Clara Seattle Until 9/22/2026 8+ years exp First posted July 24, 2026 Last posted July 24, 2026
Job description

Do you want to make Siri and Apple products smarter for our users? The Search & Knowledge Platform team is redefining how hundreds of millions of people use their devices to get information. We are an Applied ML team pushing the limits on realtime augmented information retrieval and generation, information safety and search technologies, while also responsible for a few user facing production services. We are part of a wider effort to power information across a variety of Apple products – including Siri, Spotlight, Safari, Messages, Lookup, and more.

Description

In this role, you will drive E2E Apple Knowledge Graph engineering to generate answers and experiences for users' knowledge questions. It includes open-domain knowledge extraction, knowledge conflation, knowledge graph construction, and serving. You will also lead the team in developing advanced NLP and ML models to understand user query entities and intent, retrieve the relevant entities and facts from the knowledge graph, and generate high-quality answers and dialog/experiences using LLM-powered models. You are expected to take advantage of the Apple ecosystem that blends cutting-edge hardware, software, and strong privacy/security guarantees, integrate this with Apple’s knowledge infrastructure and phenomenal power of generative models, and then deliver the truly delightful knowledge-driven user experiences that are uniquely Apple. You will be responsible for devising the product vision and strategy, evangelizing it, executing the plan, and delivering a high-quality end-user experience. You will be able to work with a wide range of organizational partners across design, product and marketing, software engineering, data science, foundation models, and machine learning and profoundly impact billions of Apple users worldwide.

Minimum Qualifications

8+ years of experience leading engineering/applied research/ML experiences in search, natural language processing/understanding, and conversational AI.
MS or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, information retrieval, data mining, or a related field

Preferred Qualifications

Strong background and experience in Search and related technologies (Machine Learning, Ranking, Relevance and Metrics)
Strong engineering and R&D experience in E2E knowledge graph technologies
Exceptional verbal and written communication skills to lead
Product Vision.
Ability to manage long-term strategy and short-term deliverables.
Strong engineering leadership and fundamentals.

About this role

Summary

Lead ML and NLP development for Apple knowledge and search products.

Job title

Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Answers, Search & Knowledge Platforms

Experience level

8+ years

Minimum experience

8+ years exp

Industry

software

Location requirements

Santa Clara or Seattle; remote not specified

Salary

Not specified

Management role

No

Skills & keywords

Required skills

searchnatural language processingmachine learningknowledge graphML models

Preferred skills

search technologiesrankingrelevance metricsknowledge graph technologiesleadership

Specializations

machine learningnatural language processingknowledge graphsearchgenerative models
Locations

Structured locations inferred from the posting.

Santa Clara, CA, USA

On-site City

Seattle, WA, USA

On-site City