Pathrise Guide
How to Get a Job at Apple
About this guide
These pages are meant to provide helpful information about how to get a software engineering, product manager, data science, and designer job at Apple. Being prepared and knowledgeable is a key to every step of the hiring process. You can tab through each part of the guide to see information that can be helpful to your stage from office location for those trying to figure out if a company has a presence in your city of choice to real world interview questions. These guides contain much of the same information we have Pathrise fellows review before they apply or interview for a job with Apple for roles including Software Developer, Mobile Developer, Software Engineer, Web Developer, Software Architect, Computer Programmer, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Scientist, Data Analyst, Data Engineer, Product Designer, UI Designer, UX Designer, Experience Designer, Web Designer, Product Manager, and Technical Product Manager and other tech, data, and product related roles. We hope you find these helpful and if you have content that you think we should add or think we got anything wrong, please email us at [email protected] and let us know.
- Apple is very secretive about a lot of the work that they do
- Their company culture seems to have declined a bit and their upper management has been noted as difficult to work with
- Employees report working long hours
- Compensation is on the high end of the spectrum for all positions
On average, the interview process for a software engineer at Apple takes 1-2 months.
Stage 1: Phone screen with recruiter, including a couple technical questions
Stage 2: Phone screen with hiring manager
Stage 3: Technical phone screen with an engineer
This includes a coding challenge on a shared platform and other technical questions
Stage 4: Onsite interview
The onsite interview lasts 5 hours and comprises of around 5 rounds with each team, each consisting of 4 technical interviews and a lunch interview. The questions are typical coding algorithm, data structure and design questions. Apple interviews are team based and its possible for a candidate to interview with more than one team.
The interview process for a data scientist at Apple takes around a month.
Stage 1: Phone screen with recruiter
Stage 2: Phone screen with hiring manager
Stage 3: Technical phone interview
1 hour of Python exercises and general data science reasoning.
Stage 4: Onsite interview
The onsite includes 5 interviews with programmers, data scientists, managers, and directors. The questions consist of general knowledge questions regarding programming and statistics/math.
The interview process for a product/experience/UX UI designer at Apple takes beyond 3 weeks.
Stage 1: Phone screen with recruiter
Stage 2: Phone screen with hiring manager
Stage 3: Phone screen with a senior designer
Stage 4: At-home design challenge
Stage 5: Onsite interview
The onsite consists of a portfolio review and face to face interviews. The portfolio review is with half a dozen designers and then individual 1:2 and 1:1 interviews. During the portfolio review, the candidate is asked questions on why he/she has made certain design decisions, what information they used to inform their decision, and what would they have done differently.
The interview process for a product manager at Apple takes about 6 weeks.
Stage 1: Phone screen with recruiter
Stage 2: Phone screen with hiring manager
Stage 3: Phone screen with product director
Stage 4: Onsite interview
The onsite interview consists of lunch and meeting with 5 members of the team. Questions are both technical and behavioral.
- Design a workflow diagram for a problem
- A chessboard problem and it's variations
- System Design, Session management, REST, security and data store questions
- Given a function magicNumber() that returns a random integer 1 or 0, write a new function that will generate a random number that uses this magicNumber() function.
- Theory behind common software engineering/algo/data structures concepts and problems.
- Typical data structures, parsing, flow control, corner case handling
- Linked List Random Node
- Questions related to integrating interval ranges
- What DataStructure would you consider to represent a File Structure (zipped) / Print the fileStructure with indentation A.zip B.txt C.zip D.txt E.zip
- Find the least common Ancestor of two nodes in a tree
- Level of experience with iOS development
- Algorithms questions, architecture/ system design questions, NLP questions
- Implement a quadtree
- Write a function that can return the number of times that ____ appears in a number.
- OS Concepts
- Median for a stream
- Implement a list
- Debug a hash table implementation
- Matrix multiplication
- Write a code to add/subtract two linked lists that contained a digit each to represent huge numbers (ex: 1 -> 4 -> 4 + 1 ->9 -> 5 1 -> 4 -> 4 - 1 ->9 -> 5)
- Reverse a string
- Find the index at which the sum of the left half of array is equal to the right half.
- What is a propensity model and how are beta estimates calculated by MLE?
- What is a time series model and how do you do the calculation of ACF and PACF?
- Bias-Variance tradeoff and ways to check overfitting of a model
- Loading json, how to store json file, data collection part. Questions regarding quality assurance of design of a product.
- What is bias variance tradeoff? How is XGBoost handling bias-variance tradeoff?
- Code in Python to find anagrams in a list and print out list of anagrams.
- Describe the difference between L1 and L2 regularization, specifically in regards to the difference in their impact on the model training process itself
- How do you take millions of users with 100s of transactions each, amongst 10ks of products and group the users together in a meaningful segments?
- What could Siri do better?
- How do you make a double clock cycle?
- What's the most challenging project you've ever worked on?
- What happens to the temperature of an adiabatic room when a refrigerator in that room is opened
- How was this aluminum part on the table made?
- What inspires your design?
- Draw a strain-stress curve. How does the hardening process influence the curve?
- 5 ways to reduce the deflection of a beam. Which two of them are the most effective?
- How do you compare Al, Ti, Cu, Steel at home?
- Several pulleys and two boxes in a diagram, what is the movement direction of a box? Create a free body diagram
- Calculate the square root of 38 in your head
- Give us more than 5 manufacturing ways to create a line of holes in a tube
- How would you assemble the Macbook Pro's power adapter?
- Draw an FBD of a computer monitor
- Theoretical applied mechanics questions, like fracture, stress, strain diagrams etc.
- Pressure and material questions
- What is your design process?
- How do you handle a situation when a developer doesn't create the product the way you designed it?
- Walk me through the components needed to build a data processing and reporting system.
- There is an assembly line and all of a sudden it stops working. No one is around, how will you handle it?
- What's the accomplishment you are most proud of in your career?
- What's your favorite Apple product?
- Why Apple?
- What feature(s) would you like to see added to "product X"?
- Tell me a time where you had to make a decision in the midst of a lot of ambiguity?
- Tell me something challenging about your career
Mission
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
Vision
We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products and that's not changing. We are constantly focusing on innovating. We believe in the simple, not the complex. We believe that we need to own and control the primary technologies behind the products that we make, and participate only in markets where we can make a significant contribution. We believe in saying no to thousands of projects, so that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us. We believe in deep collaboration and cross-pollination of our groups, which allow us to innovate in a way that others cannot. And frankly, we don't settle for anything less than excellence in every group in the company, and we have the self-honesty to admit when we're wrong and the courage to change.
Empathy for Customers/Users
We offer superior products that fill real needs and provide lasting value. We deal fairly with competitors and meet customers and vendors more than halfway. We are genuinely interested in solving customer problems, and we will not compromise our ethics or integrity in the name of profit.
Aggressiveness/Achievement
We set aggressive goals and drive ourselves hard to achieve them. We recognize that this is a unique time, when our products will change the way people work and live. It is an adventure, and we are in it together.
Positive Social Contribution
We build products that extend human capability, freeing people from drudgery and helping them achieve more than they could alone. But beyond that, we expect to make this world a better place to live. As a corporate citizen, we wish to be an economic, intellectual, and social asset in communities where we operate.
Innovation/Vision
We built our company on innovation, providing products that were new and needed. We accept the risks inherent in following our vision, and work to develop leadership products that command the profit margins we strive for.
Individual Performance
We expect individual commitment and performance above the standard for our industry. Only thus will we make the profits that permit us to seek our other corporate objectives. Each employee can and must make a difference. In the final analysis, individuals determine the character and strength of Apple.
Team Spirit
Teamwork is essential to Apple's success, for the job is too big to be done by one person. Individuals are encouraged to interact with all levels of management, sharing ideas and suggestions to improve Apple's effectiveness and quality of life. It takes all of us to win. We support each other and share the vistories and rewards together. We are enthusiastic about what we do.
Quality/Excellence
We care about what we do. We build into Apple products a level of quality, performance, and value that will earn the respect and loyalty of our customers. At Apple, quality management is critical to our continued success.
Individual Reward
We recognize each person's contribution to Apple's success, and we share the financial rewards that flow from high performance. We recognize also that rewards must be psychological as well as financial, and we strive for an atmosphere where each individual can share the adventure and excitement of working at Apple.
Good Management
The attitudes and behaviors of managers toward their people are of primary importance. Employees should be able to trust the motives and integrity of their supervisors. It is the responsibility of management to create a productive environment where Apple Values flourish.
- Cupertino: 1 Apple Park Way
- Toronto: 1600 120 Bremner Blvd
- Khwaeng Pathum Wan: 999/9 Rama I Rd
- Taipei City: A, 19th Floor Walsin (Citibank) 1 Songzhi Road
- Singapore: 7 Ang Mo Kio Street 64
- Auckland: PO Box 912015 Auckland Mail Centre
- Kuala Lumpur: Level 11 Menara CIMB, Jalan Stesen Sentral 2, Kuala Lumpur Sentral
- South Bay: Edificio Luen Pong 743-763 Av. da Praia Grande
- Seoul: 3901, ASEM Tower 517 Yeongdong-daero Gangnam-Gu
- Tokyo: Roppongi Hills, Roppongi No.10, Minato-ku
- Sydney: PO Box A2629
- Bengaluru: UB City No.24 Vittal Mallya Rd
- Causeway Bay: Room 2401, Block 1, Times Square
- Cork: Hollyhill Ln