Software Engineering Manager - Kafka

CompanyApple

LocationLondon, England, United Kingdom

Posted At1/16/2026

UK Visa Sponsorship Analytics

Occupation Type

IT managers

Occupation Code Skill LevelHigher Skilled

Sponsorship Salary Threshold

£55,000 (£28.21 per hour)

Occupation rate applies

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Description

Summary

Imagine what you could do here. At Apple, new ideas become great products, services, and customer experiences quickly. Bring focus, rigor, and leadership to your team and shape the evolution of Apple’s Kafka ecosystem.

Apple is seeking an experienced engineering manager to lead an established team responsible for building, contributing to, and managing the core Apache Kafka infrastructure that powers Apple’s critical services. This team develops, maintains, and scales Kafka internally while actively contributing to the upstream open-source project. Your work will impact all users of Apple products and services and ensure the reliability, performance, and evolution of Apple’s messaging platforms.

Description

Apple’s Kafka organization develops messaging systems that are reliable, scalable, and performant. The team maintains Apple-scale deployments while contributing to Kafka internals, brokers, client libraries, replication, fault tolerance, partitioning, and system optimizations.

As a leader, you will manage, mentor, and grow engineers responsible for both internal platform needs and upstream open-source contributions. You will oversee technical execution, maintain engineering standards, and ensure operational excellence across the Kafka ecosystem.

Minimum Qualifications

Comprehensive experience in software development, with a deep understanding of distributed systems or messaging platforms at scale.
Technical leadership experience overseeing complex projects and multiple engineers.
Direct people management experience mentoring and growing engineering teams.
Proven track record of building and leading infrastructure teams with credibility and influence.
Proficiency in Java, Scala, or other languages used in Kafka development.
Advanced understanding of algorithms, data structures, fault tolerance, and performance for large-scale messaging systems.

Preferred Qualifications

Deep knowledge of Kafka broker internals, replication, partitioning, client libraries, and event delivery guarantees.
Familiarity with distributed systems concepts such as consensus protocols, consistency models, and fault tolerance.
Experience with multi-datacenter deployments, load balancing, quota management, and tenant isolation.
Strong background in testing methodologies, including fault injection, property-based testing, and performance benchmarking.
Ability to drive operational excellence, including monitoring, incident response, and long-term remediation strategies.

Experience contributing to open-source projects, ideally Apache Kafka or related ecosystems.

Hands-on expertise with Apache Kafka internals and distributed system design.

BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.

At Apple, we’re not all the same. And that’s our greatest strength. We draw on the differences in who we are, what we’ve experienced and how we think. Because to create products that serve everyone, we believe in including everyone. Therefore, we are committed to treating all applicants fairly and equally. As a registered Disability Confident employer, we will work with applicants to make any reasonable accommodations. Apple will consider for employment all qualified applicants with criminal backgrounds in a manner consistent with applicable law. Learn more