Database Engineer - RAG Platform Developer

Apple Inc

Austin, TX

JOB DETAILS
SKILLS
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Best Practices, Concurrency, Continuous Improvement, Data Management, Data Partitioning, Database Administration, Database Architecture, Database Optimization, Database Programming, Design Patterns Programming Methodologies, DevOps, Disaster Recovery, JavaScript, Mentoring, MySQL, Operations Processes, Performance Management, Performance Metrics, PostgreSQL, Process Improvement, Production Systems, Python Programming/Scripting Language, QoS (Quality of Service), Quality Management, Replication and Remote Mirroring, Resource Management, SQL (Structured Query Language), SQL Databases, Shallow Parsing, Software Development, Systems Reliability, Systems Scalability, Team Player, Technical Leadership, Training Data Sets
LOCATION
Austin, TX
POSTED
30+ days ago

We're seeking a Database Engineer to architect and optimize our large-scale RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) platform that serves our users across all of the Hardware Tech group. This role combines deep database expertise with modern AI/ML infrastructure, enabling design teams to seamlessly onboard and query enterprise-scale datasets. You'll be responsible for database architecture and optimization while also contributing to full-stack GenAI application development.

As a Database Engineer on our team, you will architect and optimize our SQL and vector database infrastructure supporting enterprise-scale design data. You'll lead technical decisions on database architecture, scaling patterns, and technology selection for our RAG platform while designing comprehensive strategies to ensure optimal performance. Working closely with the development team, you'll build and refine data ingestion pipelines that enable design teams across all disciplines to seamlessly onboard their data. You'll collaborate with DevOps/SRE teams to ensure quality of service, proper resource allocation, and system scalability while improving RAG retrieval performance through hybrid search strategies, index tuning, and embedding optimization. In addition to your primary database focus, you'll contribute to full-stack development using Python and JavaScript, monitor database health and performance metrics for our multi-tenant system, and develop and maintain database operations procedures, monitoring, and disaster recovery strategies while driving continuous improvement of retrieval quality, search latency, and overall system reliability. You'll also provide mentorship to other engineers on database best practices and scalable design patterns.

Proficiency in Python or Javascript.

Production experience deploying and managing vector databases (Milvus, Qdrant, or Weaviate) at scale

Experience with PostgreSQL or MySQL in production environments

Understanding of RAG pipelines, including embedding strategies, chunking, and retrieval optimization

Minimum requirement of BS + 10 years of relevant industry experienceUnderstanding of Vector database indexing strategies and tradeoffs

Strong SQL proficiency with deep understanding of query planning, indexing strategies, and optimization techniques

Postgres advanced features (extensions, replication, sharding)

Experience managing large-scale databases serving high-concurrency workloads

Experience with embedding models and LLM integration patterns

Demonstrated experience building or optimizing RAG systems in production environments

Collaborative mindset with ability to mentor engineers and work closely with DevOps/SRE teams

Monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana)

Kubernetes experience, particularly with stateful applications and database deployments

Proven ability to make architectural decisions for scalable database systems

About the Company

A

Apple Inc

We bring amazing people together to make amazing things happen.

We’re a diverse collection of thinkers and doers, continually reimagining what’s possible to help us all do what we love in new ways. The people who work here have reinvented entire industries with the Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, as well as with services, including iTunes, the App Store, Apple Music, and Apple Pay. And the same passion for innovation that goes into our products also applies to our practices — strengthening our commitment to leave the world better than we found it.

About Apple

There’s a place here for every kind of brilliant. Everyone here is an innovator, or an innovator-to-be, no matter what your team or your role. So bring your passion, courage, and original thinking and get ready to share it, because every new product, service, or feature we invent is the result of people working together to make each others’ ideas stronger. Innovation at this level depends on people who represent the variety of the human experience and inspire us with their own fresh perspectives. Together, we’ll do amazing work that can make a difference in people’s lives. Including your own. Learn more about working at Apple.

COMPANY SIZE
10,000 employees or more
INDUSTRY
Computer/IT Services
FOUNDED
1976
WEBSITE
https://www.apple.com/jobs