What are the responsibilities and job description for the API Review & Design Engineer position at Apple?
Our small, outstanding team in Apple’s Software Engineering division is chartered to help framework teams throughout the company ensure the Apple developer experience is just as carefully crafted as Apple's end-user hardware and software products. We’re looking for someone who’s passionate about software design and excited to play a key role in organizing multi-functional projects. As a member of our team, you’ll have a unique opportunity to help shape the technologies that inspire developers around the world and empower them to realize their dreams.
Our team provides API design guidance, consulting, and outreach to framework engineering teams to support the development of consistent, complete, and intuitive APIs. We establish and maintain API guidelines for our operating systems and review the design of software programming interfaces to ensure comprehensive access to platform functionality is available through Apple's SDKs. The team also reviews the needs of Apple applications to identify missing functionality in the SDKs and recommends and tracks API additions to fill identified gaps.
You’ll help us refine and implement this mission. Ours is a small team with a broad reach, so you will have an opportunity to specialize in responsibilities best suited to your strengths. This role's primary focus is to help engineering teams design public-facing frameworks through activities such as:
-- Advising framework teams to help transform feature plans and underlying technologies into well-architected, developer-focused APIs
-- Evaluating proposals and providing concrete feedback on ergonomics, consistency with guidelines and precedents, and interaction with other parts of the developer experience
-- Evangelizing and teaching new Swift features and framework-development guidelines to Apple engineering teams
-- Assessing API coverage and completeness and identifying areas where additional interfaces are needed
Identifying salient points from API Review discussions and new SDK releases to expand and improve on published API Guidelines
-- Working with other Apple teams to integrate organizational goals
-- Participating in the stewardship and evolution of Apple's software quality efforts and processes
Minimum Qualifications:
5-10 years experience working in software development in Swift or Objective-C
A strong understanding of software architecture and API design
Strong written and presentation skills — able to communicate effectively with engineers and senior leaders
Proven ability to ramp up quickly on new technologies
Preferred Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
Hard-working with the ability to work autonomously