Principal Platform Engineer (People Systems)

Quick Facts

• Role: Application Architect / Principal Platform Engineer for People Systems
• Focus: configuration-driven, agentic workflows platform for recruiting, onboarding, core HR, payroll, compensation, and benefits

Description

Shape the technical strategy for Apple’s People Systems platform, where configuration is the product and agentic workflows enable flexible, runtime behavior changes without waiting for releases. Design architecture so many components behave as one system, balancing fast delivery with long-term platform health. Build scalable, secure, and resilient systems through product-minded technical excellence.

Responsibilities

• Architect a configuration-driven platform (data models, rules, workflows, permissions, screens, and reports) that is versioned and interpreted at runtime
• Make architectural trade-offs between delivery speed and long-term platform stability
• Ensure unified behavior across hundreds of components
• Partner with product managers and cross-functional engineering teams to deeply understand problems before choosing solutions
• Lead technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority

Requirements

• 15+ years of professional software engineering in system design, technical architecture, or solution architecture for large-scale enterprise solutions
• BS/MS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Led architecture of a configuration-driven platform for multiple teams (metadata models, multi-tenancy, extensibility, versioned APIs, safe publish/promote/rollback)
• Proficient across technology stacks; built interpreters/compilers, query/authorization, workflow/state engines, search/reporting, and UI runtimes within one system
• Distributed-systems depth (consistency models, fault tolerance, partitioning, failure-mode analysis) with HA and horizontal scale design
• Strong event-driven and event-sourced foundation (saga/workflow orchestration, streaming, CDC, transactional data stores)
• Evolved schemas and contracts at scale with backward-compatible metadata/config changes and migration of in-flight workflows
• Deep Spring Boot (or equivalent) and microservices expertise; async fluency via virtual threads (Java 21+), coroutines, or reactive programming
• Expert relational or NoSQL database skills (schema design, query optimization, migrations, transaction management)
• Hands-on AI-native SDLC and agent orchestration (coding agents under tests/review; tool calling; graph orchestration; context management; structured output validation)
• Cloud-native production experience on AWS (or comparable), including Kubernetes, IAM, cost governance, monitoring/alerting, incident response, and post-mortems

Benefits

Opportunity to build platform capabilities that directly shape employee experience across the full People Systems journey (from hiring to growth and ongoing support).