Tier 2Ranked #6 of 12 on The Data Engineer List

Apple Data Engineer jobs

Senior data engineers for AI and data-platform teams, hybrid in Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Austin.

$129k–$225k

base salary

73/100

Index score

Cupertino · Sunnyvale · Austin · Seattle

Locations

Hiring

As of October 10, 2026

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The Data Engineer (ICT3) role

Apple data engineers build pipelines, models and data products behind services (iCloud, Music, Retail, Finance, Health) and Apple’s internal AI/ML and data platforms. Most hiring is senior (4–5+ years), with posted stacks such as Spark, Kafka, Flink, Iceberg and Kubernetes on platform teams and Snowflake or Databricks on analytics teams. Data engineering is folded into software engineering rather than being its own ladder, and nearly every seat is hybrid in California, Austin or Seattle.

No dedicated DE ladder: data engineers sit in the software engineering family at ICT2–ICT5, and many data-platform seats carry plain software engineer titles; the notable orgs are Apple Data Platform, AI & Data Platforms (AiDP) in IS&T and Apple Services Engineering analytics in Seattle.

Worth knowing: Apple’s 2026 DE reqs skew toward AI — titles include ‘AIML Data Engineer’, ‘Data Engineer (Agentic AI, LLM Training)’ and ‘Simulation Generative Data Engineer’ — and about 31 IC reqs sit in the AiDP and Apple Data Platform orgs.

Apple data engineer salary

$129k–$225k

Base salary

Not published

Total comp (est., with equity)

Base: posted on jobs.apple.com for ‘Data Engineer – Capacity Planning – Apple Data Platform’ (Cupertino, 3+ years, posted Sep 23, 2026) as $129,300–$225,300, a band that spans several ICT levels; other posted DE ranges are Finance Data Engineer (5+ years) $149,200–$249,000, Senior Data Engineer (Sunnyvale) $150,400–$277,600 and Senior Data Engineer, Data Products $184,700–$324,800 (posted Oct 9, 2026). All-in: no figure — levels.fyi publishes no data-engineer percentile for Apple (its title-level figures mix levels on n=9), and its ICT3 data points average about $220k.

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How Apple scores

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Index score: 73/100. How we rank →

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Apple data engineer: common questions

Apple’s posted base band is $129k–$225k. Base: posted on jobs.apple.com for ‘Data Engineer – Capacity Planning – Apple Data Platform’ (Cupertino, 3+ years, posted Sep 23, 2026) as $129,300–$225,300, a band that spans several ICT levels; other posted DE ranges are Finance Data Engineer (5+ years) $149,200–$249,000, Senior Data Engineer (Sunnyvale) $150,400–$277,600 and Senior Data Engineer, Data Products $184,700–$324,800 (posted Oct 9, 2026). All-in: no figure — levels.fyi publishes no data-engineer percentile for Apple (its title-level figures mix levels on n=9), and its ICT3 data points average about $220k.

As of October 10, 2026: About 19 US individual-contributor reqs titled Data Engineer or Analytics Engineer on jobs.apple.com as of Oct 10, 2026 (ten posted since July 2026), plus about 31 IC software-engineer reqs in the AI & Data Platforms and Apple Data Platform orgs, mostly in Sunnyvale and Austin; teams include Apple Data Platform, AiDP (IS&T), AIML, Finance, iCloud Insights, Retail Data Products, Health and Apple Services Engineering analytics. Check the live careers page for current reqs.

Not typically. Typical minimums on DE reqs: 3+ years (Capacity Planning), 4+ years (AIML Data Engineer), 5+ years (Finance Data Engineer and Senior DE) and 10+ years for Senior Data Engineer, AIML — strong SQL and Python, with Scala, Java and Spark on senior reqs and Snowflake or Databricks on some, and usually a bachelor’s in CS or a related field. No entry-level DE req is open; early career comes via the internship or IS&T early-career SWE reqs.

Mostly not. Hybrid, about 3 days in office (Apple’s long-standing Monday, Tuesday and Thursday pattern); postings show no home-office option.

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Apple Data Engineer jobs

The Data Engineer (ICT3) role

Apple data engineer salary

Interviewing at Apple?

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Apple data engineer: common questions

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