Software Engineer - System Scheduling Performance

Summary

Allocating resource usage efficiently is a key differentiator for Apple products. The System Scheduling Performance team, part of CoreOS, builds the background task scheduler that runs on every one of our platforms, sitting at the intersection of power, performance, and feature latency.

We schedule workloads intelligently in optimal device conditions, accounting for feature usage history, battery life, thermals, network efficiency, memory, and more. This technology is the foundation of features such as Siri AI, Apple Intelligence, Photo Processing, Automatic Software Updates, Background App Refresh, iCloud Photo Library, and many more!

In this highly visible role, you will design a scalable scheduling system to handle the ever increasing demand for background processing, and help teams across Apple adopt these operating system concepts.

The team is looking for innovative candidates to design and implement new capabilities to manage process runtime and resource utilization across our diverse product lines. In this highly visible role, you will be driving the development of a scalable architecture for resource management, as well as influencing and assisting cross-functional teams with the adoption of these new operating system concepts. Through the combination of effective collaboration, data and performance analysis, software prototyping, and systems engineering, you will push the boundary of what's possible at the core of the operating system!

About the role

We are looking for a highly motivated systems software engineer with excellent analytical, problem solving, and communication skills to contribute high quality software to iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.

You will design and implement new operating system constructs for intelligent resource management, develop scheduling policies that balance power, performance, and feature latency, and build new APIs for client adoption.

You will analyze performance data from large fleets of devices to understand how background work behaves in the real world, and use those insights to guide both our own design decisions and the adoption practices of client teams. Through on-device software development and experimentation, you will push the boundary of what's possible in a highly contested and collaborative operating system.

Responsibilities

• Designs, implements and evangelizes new operating system constructs that enable intelligent resource management across Apple platforms.
• Develops scheduling policies that balance power, thermals, memory, network efficiency, and feature latency.
• Builds and evolves APIs that client teams use to schedule background work.
• Analyzes and presents key performance data for highly visible OS features.
• Prototypes new ideas and features rapidly in collaboration with other engineers.
• Partners with client teams to understand their background processing needs and guides adoption of scheduling best practices.
• Tests, debugs, and productizes code to Apple's quality bar.

Minimum Qualifications

Strong programming background and technical skills with 2+ years after a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field

Clear understanding of operating system components and responsibilities

• Familiarity with statistics and data analysis to derive meaningful insights from large datasets
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills, with a collaborative working style.
• Track record of leading software projects from inception through delivery, working across teams and stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• M.S. or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, with strong Systems understanding and intuition
• Working knowledge of operating systems internals, including memory management, resource contention, thread and process lifecycles, and file systems.
• Experience identifying and driving Power & Performance optimizations
• Familiarity with C/C++ or Objective-C or Swift, and Python for data analysis.
• Experience influencing adoption of platform APIs or OS-level policy across client teams.