Senior Backend Software Engineer - Apple Sports

Apple is where individual imaginations capture to build innovative products, services, and experiences that enrich lives worldwide. By encouraging a culture of collaboration and diversity, we strengthen each other’s ideas, unlocking innovation that runs through everything we do. Join us, and you’ll do more than be part of something - you’ll add something. Apple Sports is looking for an expert Backend Engineer to help redefine how users experience sports through the Apple Sports app, Apple TV, and more. As part of the Sports team, you’ll collaborate with world-class engineers to create reliable, scalable solutions for processing and displaying real-time sports data. This is an outstanding opportunity to shape the sports experience for millions of users worldwide. Join our Sports Backend Infrastructure team and build the engine that powers real-time sports experiences for millions of fans! As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining the highly available, real-time data services that ingest, process, and distribute sports data at massive scale. Your work will focus on building and optimizing high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems, ensuring exceptional performance, reliability, and scalability. You’ll leverage industry-standard best practices for distributed architectures and collaborate with world-class engineers to deliver impactful features and execute on our technical roadmap. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to provide technical guidance and mentorship to junior engineers, fostering a culture of learning and growth. Minimum Qualifications: 5 years of professional software engineering experience, building and deploying scalable, distributed systems in a production environment Strong proficiency in Java, with demonstrated experience applying both Object-Oriented and Functional programming principles Solid understanding of concurrency control mechanisms, fundamental data structures, and efficient algorithm design Hands-on experience with with databases such as Cassandra and Redis, and stream processing platforms like Kafka Proven ability to design and implement systems with a focus on scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience Preferred Qualifications: Experience building and optimizing real-time data pipelines, including data ingestion, transformation, and delivery Practical experience with container orchestration using Kubernetes and building/maintaining CI/CD pipelines Familiarity with stream processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Flink, Apache Spark Streaming, Kafka Streams) and associated best practices Passion for sports and the sports data ecosystem Self-motivated with strong collaboration and communication skills Experience working in a fast-paced, agile environment