Design Engineer — App Store

Role Number: 200682817Team: DesignLocation: Culver City; CupertinoWeekly Hours: 40Posted: 2026-09-10SummaryThe App Store & Games Product Design Team is responsible for the customer experience across the App Store, Apple Arcade and Apple Games, serving hundreds of millions of people every day on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Watch, Vision Pro and the web. Our team of designers and researchers design and ship product experiences at a global scale.
We are seeking an exceptional Design Engineer who operates confidently at the intersection of design craft and software engineering. You will join us at a pivotal moment. AI-assisted development has fundamentally changed what our team can build and how fast we can build it. This is a new kind of role for our team: a deeply technical builder embedded within our design organization, responsible for the engineering infrastructure, tooling, and workflows that enable our designers to build and ship production-quality prototypes. You will work alongside technically-minded designers who will be your closest collaborators, and define how our team works with code.
DescriptionOur team has moved beyond static specs and documentation. We build functional, code-based prototypes in Swift and web technologies, and in some cases our prototypes are adopted directly into shipping builds. We are looking for an engineer who can scale these practices, maintain what we build, and establish robust infrastructure for collaboration, distribution, and handover.
This role spans two technical domains: web-based tooling and backend experiences that power native Swift/iOS front ends, and native iOS/macOS prototype work in Swift and SwiftUI. You will be expected to operate confidently across both.
You will architect and structure code projects so that designers can contribute effectively. You will manage version control and collaboration workflows, distribute prototypes through TestFlight and internal platforms, and ensure that what we build is maintainable, well-organized, and ready for engineering adoption. You will take working prototypes and elevate them from proof-of-concept to structured, distributable artifacts that production teams can integrate with confidence.
While this role sits within the design organization, you will work in close partnership with our engineering teams — facilitating handover, aligning on technical standards, and in some cases contributing directly to production repositories.
You will stay at the frontier of AI-assisted development, evaluating new tools and helping the team maintain its technical edge.
This is a senior, independent role. You will have significant autonomy to define technical standards, establish workflows, and shape the future of how design and engineering collaborate across our products.
Minimum Qualifications5+ years of software engineering experience, with strong proficiency in iOS/macOS development (Swift, SwiftUI, UIKit)Equally strong proficiency with web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript/TypeScript, React or similar)Strong proficiency with Git, CI/CD pipelines, and developer infrastructure including TestFlight, code signing, and build distributionExperience architecting codebases for collaboration — establishing patterns, documentation, and structure that enable others to build on top of your workExperience integrating with APIs, backend services, and data pipelinesDemonstrated fluency with AI-assisted development tools, with a clear perspective on how these tools are changing engineering workflowsExcellent communication skills and the ability to translate between design and engineering contexts with clarityExperience working within or closely alongside design teams, with a genuine appreciation for design craft, visual quality, and interaction detailPreferred QualificationsExperience with Core Animation, Core Graphics, Metal, or advanced motion and animation frameworksFamiliarity with machine learning pipelines, personalization systems, or recommendation engines, and the ability to interface with these systems to improve user-facing experiencesExperience setting up and managing internal tools, developer platforms, or prototype distribution systemsPrevious experience mentoring or enabling non-engineers in technical workflowsExperience working in environments where design and engineering boundaries are intentionally blurredFamiliarity with spec-driven development practicesA deep understanding of the Apple design aesthetic, Human Interface Guidelines, and platform conventionsPay & BenefitsAt Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $184,700 and $324,800, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple’s discretionary employe