Job Details

Role Number: 200630798-3337

Summary

Imagine what you could do here! At Apple, great ideas have a way of becoming great products, services, and customer experiences very quickly. Combining groundbreaking machine learning research with next-generation hardware, our teams take user experiences to the next level.

Description

Apple’s AIML Residency is a year-long program inviting experts in various fields to apply their own domain expertise to innovate and build revolutionary machine learning and AI-based products and experiences. As AI-based solutions spread across fields, the need for domain experts to understand machine learning and apply their expertise in ML settings grows.

Residents will have the opportunity to attend ML and AI courses, learn from an Apple mentor closely involved in their program, collaborate with fellow residents, gain hands-on experience working on high-impact projects, publish in world-class academic conferences, and partner with Apple teams across hardware, software, and services.

The AIML Answers, Knowledge and Information team is creating groundbreaking technology for AI, ML, and NLP! The features we create redefine how hundreds of millions of people use their computers and mobile devices to search and find what they are looking for. Our universal search engine powers search features across a variety of Apple products, including Siri, Spotlight, Safari, Messages and Lookup. We also develop pioneering LLM-based generative AI technologies to power innovative features in both Apple’s devices and services on the cloud.

As a Resident on this team, you'll conduct large-scale ML and deep learning research and development. Your R&D efforts aim to improve Open Domain Question Answering (using both structured knowledge graph data and unstructured web data), Summarization, and the fundamental building blocks of Artificial Intelligence. This involves developing sophisticated LLMs to: understand user queries, retrieve and rank relevant documents across multiple sources, and synthesize information to provide users with a direct answer that best satisfies their intent and information seeking needs. Additionally, you'll research and develop the state-of-the-art LLMs for summarizing personal data such as emails, messages, and notifications. Residents collaborate with researchers and data scientists to develop, fine-tune, and evaluate domain specific LLMs for various tasks and applications in Apple’s AI powered products. Our team also conducts applied research to transfer the latest research in generative AI to production ready technologies.

Minimum Qualifications

• Proficiency in a programming language such as Python, Objective-C, C++, Swift, and/or R. Candidates should have experience completing a moderate-sized software project

• Demonstrated ability to connect and collaborate with others

• Graduate degree in a STEM field or equivalent industry experience in software engineering

• Apple’s AIML residency is a one-year program starting in July 2026. Residents must be available to work full-time (40 hours/week) July 13, 2026 - July 9, 2027. Additionally, applicants who are currently enrolled in a degree program must graduate before this program commences on July 13, 2026

Preferred Qualifications

• Ideal candidates will also have academic, research, or industry experience in one of the following: Large Language Models / Generative AI, Machine Learning & ML Research, Natural Language Processing/Conversational AI, Search, or Information Retrieval. Thesis, capstone project, internship, co-op, and/or proven experience in these fields qualifies

• Experience in various pioneering techniques related to LLM fine-tuning in 1 or more of the following areas:

• Supervised Fine-tuning (SFT) with Rejection Sampling

• Preference-based fine-tuning techniques (e.g RLHF, Reward model, DPO, PPO, GRPO etc.)

• Parameter efficient fine-tuning techniques (e.g LoRA)

• Hallucination reduction and factual accuracy improvements

• Designing and implementing safety guardrails

• One or more scientific publications in various conferences and journals

• We encourage you to submit a cover letter as part of your application explaining: What are your research interests? How do they apply to the specific Residency position you applied to? Why would you would like to join the AIML residency program broadly?

• APPLICATION DEADLINE: DECEMBER 15, 2025

Apple is an equal opportunity employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. We seek to promote equal opportunity for all applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, Veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. Learn more about your EEO rights as an applicant (https://www.eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/2023-06/22-088_EEOC_KnowYourRights6.12ScreenRdr.pdf) .