Secure Systems Engineer - Platform Architecture
Apple
Software Engineering, IT
Austin, TX, USA
Posted on May 8, 2026
Are you a big-picture visionary who understands how each element affects all the others? At Apple, our Platform Architecture group is responsible for connecting our hardware, software, and servers into one unified system. You’ll join a team of engineers and architects who are dedicated to securing the world’s most advanced consumer devices. Our products are trusted for storing personal data, and our goal is to better safeguard our users. We’re looking for dedicated and inspired individuals to help improve on the security of Apple’s products.
In this role, you will define the architecture and oversee the operation of distributed web services that set and enforce security policy for the development, manufacture, deployment, and operation of Apple products, ultimately driving continuous security improvements for these products. Together, our work will be instrumental in maintaining the trust millions of customers place in their devices every day.
- Lead cross-functional teams throughout the product development cycle to resolve system-level issues without sacrificing product security or impacting product design.
- Identify emerging threats, develop threat models, and define security architectures for new Apple products and technologies. Derive system security requirements, and design balanced and novel mitigations in creative collaboration with iconic product and engineering teams.
- Develop detailed system-level specifications to guide product development, integration, and quality assurance teams in the creation of golden unit tests, reference data, and sample libraries to aid integration of our security technologies across team boundaries (e.g. client/server).
- Drive security requirements and architecture into web application services that integrate with hardware roots of trust, playing a pivotal role in the development, manufacture, deployment, and operation of Apple products.
- Use a wide range of interpersonal and technical skills to champion adoption of our industry-leading security technologies across multiple product categories.
- BS in EE/CE/CS or related relevant field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience with secure boot and establishing hardware roots of trust; or experience designing, developing, and deploying secure web services and scalable infrastructure for highly available applications.
- Experience with common programming languages such as Python, Go or C/C++.
- Experience collaborating across multiple disciplines, such as software engineering, hardware, and infrastructure.
- 10+ years of relevant industry experience.
- Masters in EE/CE/CS or related relevant field.
- Knowledge of cryptographic principles (e.g., symmetric vs asymmetric crypto, encryption vs authentication, and PKI frameworks).
- Ability to perform critical analysis of security properties across hardware, software systems, and web service architectures in order to build a comprehensive threat model (e.g. familiarity with common threat modeling methodologies such as STRIDE or Trike).
- Ability to help drive cross-functional initiatives and to provide architectural guidance to teams lacking resident security expertise.
- Breadth to work cross-functionally with Infrastructure, Privacy, Safety, Service, Manufacturing, Software, and Product Development teams.
- Strong written and oral communications skills.
- Comfort building and using AI-assisted workflows that enhance efficiency, improve quality of output, and extend the reach of what a small team can accomplish.