Sr. Software Engineering Manager, Internal Tools
Software Engineering, Other Engineering
San Diego, CA, USA
USD 225,600-338,400 / year + Equity
Posted on Jul 16, 2026
At Apple, great ideas have a way of becoming extraordinary products, services, and customer experiences. We’re looking for an exceptional Senior Software Engineering Manager to lead our Internal Engineering Tools organization and help shape the future of how engineering teams build, operate, and innovate at scale. In this role, you’ll lead a talented team responsible for developing the platforms, applications, and AI-powered capabilities that empower engineering teams and programmers. You’ll combine technical leadership, organizational influence, and a passion for building exceptional teams to deliver scalable solutions that improve developer productivity, streamline workflows, and accelerate innovation across the video engineering ecosystem.
As a Senior Software Engineering Manager, you will lead and grow a high-performing engineering team responsible for building mission-critical internal tools and platforms. You will provide both strategic direction and hands-on technical leadership, partnering closely with engineering, product, design, operations, and AI teams to define roadmaps, deliver impactful solutions, and continuously improve the developer experience across the organization.
- Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing software engineering team, fostering a culture of technical excellence, innovation, collaboration, and continuous learning.
- Collaborate with cross-functional partners to design, build, and deliver scalable, reliable, and secure Internal tools and platforms that improve engineering productivity.
- Build and integrate AI-powered capabilities that automate workflows, enhance decision-making, and unlock insights from complex engineering and operational data.
- Establish and drive clear intake, prioritization, planning, roadmap, and execution processes for a team supporting multiple stakeholder groups and strategic initiatives.
- Serve as a trusted technical leader by guiding architecture, design, implementation, and validation while influencing engineering decisions across organizations.
- Conduct user research and partner closely with engineering teams to identify pain points, validate solutions, and prioritize investments based on measurable developer impact.
- Drive platform evolution by improving reliability, scalability, maintainability, and performance while balancing technical debt, operational excellence, and build-versus-buy decisions.
- Establish engineering best practices, including code reviews, testing strategies, CI/CD, operational readiness, observability, and quality standards that enable long-term success.
- Ensure all engineering solutions comply with Apple’s security, privacy, accessibility, and operational standards.
- Identify opportunities to create shared platforms and organization-wide solutions that reduce
- duplication, increase efficiency, and enable teams to move faster.
- 10+ years of experience in a leadership role managing software engineering teams.
- Proven experience leading lean software engineering teams across multiple concurrent, cross-functional initiatives while consistently delivering high-quality results.
- Prior experience as a software engineer with a strong understanding of the software development lifecycle and engineering best practices.
- Prior hands-on experience as a software engineer with a strong foundation in software architecture, modern development practices, and the full software development lifecycle.
- Demonstrated success coaching, mentoring, and developing engineers and engineering leaders, fostering technical excellence and career growth.
- Experience establishing engineering operating models, including intake, prioritization, roadmap planning, resource allocation, and execution across multiple stakeholder groups.
- Experience leading teams that leverage Generative AI both to accelerate software development and to build AI-powered products and capabilities that solve business problems.
- Strong technical judgment across software architecture, cloud platforms, distributed systems, and modern web technologies, with the ability to evaluate trade-offs and guide teams through design, implementation, validation, and operational support.
- Exceptional communication, collaboration, and stakeholder management skills, with a proven ability to build trusted partnerships, influence technical direction, and navigate complex organizational priorities.
- Experience balancing competing priorities while creating scalable, lightweight processes that improve execution, transparency, and organizational alignment.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Experience building and scaling internal developer tools, engineering platforms, or workflow automation systems.
- Experience designing and deploying AI- and ML-powered solutions, including large language model (LLM) applications and intelligent automation.
- Proficiency with multiple programming languages and technology stacks, such as Java, React, Svelte.
- Experience leading distributed or globally dispersed engineering teams.
- Proven track record of driving engineering process improvements, operational excellence, and platform modernization.
- Experience defining technical strategy, influencing architectural decisions, and delivering organization-wide engineering initiatives.
- Strong business acumen with the ability to translate organizational needs into scalable technical solutions.
- Passion for building inclusive, collaborative, and high-performing engineering cultures.
- Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field is preferred.