WebKit Privacy & Adtech Engineer
Apple
San Francisco, CA, USA · Oregon, USA · San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA · Multiple locations
USD 147,400-272,100 / year + Equity
Posted on Mar 17, 2026
At Apple, we care about people, and privacy is about people. Advertising is a very popular way to fund websites and traditionally, online advertising has involved technology that’s bad for privacy, such as user tracking. Making both things work well – privacy and advertising – is the mission of WebKit Privacy & Adtech. WebKit is the web engine in Safari, the world’s fastest and most power efficient web browser. WebKit is Open Source and one of the most popular frameworks for apps in iOS, watchOS, and macOS. WebKit also powers several of Apple’s own apps such as Mail, Books, and News. Our responsibilities stretch across all of those use cases.
The WebKit Privacy & Adtech team builds and maintains Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Advanced Tracking Protection, anti fingerprinting, and privacy-preserving ad attribution for Safari and apps. We do our work in the web engine which means systems programming. We are active in web standards, working with other browser vendors as well as website owners on how to progress the web platform with both privacy and advertising in mind. We're looking for an engineer who can help us investigate online tracking and fingerprinting, scale up crawling to detect tracking and fingerprinting in an automated fashion, and design and implement privacy-preserving alternatives to tracking for use in online advertising. This is a role that requires creative thinking to tackle unsolved problems, tenacity in figuring out what trackers are doing, and a firm belief that we can have a great web and Internet with privacy.
- Develop and maintain anti tracking and privacy-preserving features in WebKit which comprises millions of lines of C++, Objective-C, and Swift
- Develop and maintain in-house crawling and analysis of tracking to keep our defensive features up to date
- Follow along how the web platform and online advertising develops so that we can stay ahead of challenges coming down the road
- Systems programming skills using C++ or similar manual memory managed and pointer-based language
- Knowledge in how cross-site tracking and fingerprinting works
- Experience in ad attribution, ad targeting, and other forms of advertising measurement
- A passion for advocating for users and advancing online privacy
- BS in Computer Science or equivalent.
- Experience working on web standards in organizations like W3C and IETF
- Experience using privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) such as differential privacy, multi-party computation, and homomorphic encryption to deliver utility while protecting users
- C++ and Swift programming
- Experience using large language models for software engineering
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.