Apple finds itself at an inflection point. The company has long dominated mobile hardware, and its iPhone business remains robust—but to deliver the growth that shareholders demand, its executives have decided to expand into cloud-based services and apps. Can Apple, so successful at beating its hardware rivals, succeed against such cloud-based competitors as Amazon and Netflix?
That’s a trillion-dollar question. The success of the company’s services strategy will hinge on technologists who can build and maintain the underlying infrastructure and apps. Is Apple hiring for those roles?
For an answer, we turn to Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country. First, it should come as no surprise that the bulk of Apple’s current hiring is taking place in Silicon Valley and Austin; the former is home to the company’s headquarters (Apple Park), and the latter hosts a huge corporate campus.
Based on this list, it’s clear that Apple has an interest in hiring highly specialized technologists who can build out infrastructure and networks. Data scientists and data engineers are also represented here, which makes sense—after all, data is the fuel upon which services and systems run. But which skills does Apple want its technologists to have?
Fortunately, Burning Glass can give us an answer on that front, too:
As you can see, Apple wants technologists with some popular skills, such as Python, C++, and the principles of software engineering and development. It also wants technologists skilled in machine learning and artificial intelligence, which will prove key to its future success. Apple not only wants to improve Siri, its voice-activated digital assistant; the next generation of cloud-based apps and services need deep learning and other A.I. innovations for everything from “smart” recommendations to cybersecurity.
To build out its A.I. portfolio, Apple has been on an aggressive hiring spree. It recently snapped up Samy Bengio, previously a distinguished scientist at Google, who will lead a new A.I. research unit at Apple. Even if you apply for a technology job in a completely different area of the company, chances are good that your duties will touch on machine learning and A.I. at some point—the technology is rapidly percolating throughout the entire tech stack.