Apple
Sr. Principal Engineer - FoundationDB
$262K–$394K
Cupertino, California · Principal · Full-time · Posted Oct 28, 2026
- Experience
- 15+ years.
- Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
About the job
Set the technical vision and architecture for FoundationDB, a large-scale distributed database supporting iCloud, and guide the team’s most complex scalability and storage initiatives.
What you'll do
- Define long-term technical vision and architectural direction, including rethinking the transaction layer and scalability architecture.
- Guide high-impact technical challenges and future initiatives involving the CDC pipeline, log storage, and tiered storage.
- Partner with engineering leadership and cross-functional teams; mentor engineers and help shape technical hiring.
What they ask for
- 15+ years designing, implementing, and operating highly scalable distributed systems.
- Deep expertise in planet-scale database systems, with hands-on experience with Spanner, DynamoDB, CockroachDB, or comparable technology.
- Proven ability to define and communicate long-term technical strategy across large engineering organizations.
- Strong cross-functional partnership skills and exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
Nice to have
- Experience with modern data storage systems.
- Knowledge of security & privacy.
Pay
$262,500 to $394,000 USD base salary
Tools
FoundationDB, Spanner, DynamoDB, CockroachDB
Model-written summary · the original posting is authoritative