ML Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

Confirmed live 2 days ago Trusted

Quick summary

Work type
On-site
Location
New York, NY
Salary
$184,700–$324,800 / yr
Posted
114 days ago
Freshness
Confirmed live 2 days ago

Market check

Salary context

Above market

How this pay compares to similar roles

Similar $229k
This role $255k
$157k most similar roles pay here $343k

This role pays more than 75% of similar roles. Most pay $202,800–$255,125 — the shaded band above. At the midpoint, this role pays about $255k versus about $229k for comparable roles.

Based on 240 similar postings.

Employer

About Apple Inc

Apple Inc. is a multinational technology company known for designing and manufacturing consumer electronics, software, and online services, including the iPhone, Mac, iPad, and App Store. Industry: Consumer Electronics & Software

Apple Inc currently has 1984 open roles on FindRole.

Listed pay typically runs $175,000–$277,600 across 1590 roles with salary data.

Most-posted roles

View all roles at Apple Inc

At a glance

TL;DR · ML Researcher, Foundation Models

The ML Researcher, Apple Foundation Models joins the team building frontier foundation models designed for Apple silicon and integrated OS experiences. This role involves working across the full training lifecycle, including pre-training and developing mid-training approaches to bridge general capability with task-specific performance. You will build next-generation models optimized for agentic, reasoning, and coding capabilities by solving problems in reward modeling, RL scaling laws, and multi-turn reinforcement learning for coding agents. The work focuses on technical challenges like verifiable rewards for mathematical reasoning, long-horizon tasks, and distillation techniques to combine capabilities into single models. You will utilize Python along with deep learning toolkits such as JAX, PyTorch, or TensorFlow. The role addresses complex problems in agentic systems, including tool-use planning, error recovery, and managing context in multi-step workflows for creative and action-oriented tasks.

What you'll do

  • Pre-train and develop mid-training approaches for foundation models tailored for Apple silicon.
  • Implement reinforcement learning techniques like RLHF, GRPO, and PPO to improve model reasoning.
  • Develop autonomous coding agents capable of operating in real repositories and performing multi-step workflows.
  • Solve reward modeling problems to prevent reward hacking and handle sparse or delayed rewards.
  • Research scaling laws for RL compute allocation and progressive alignment across capability stages.
  • Train models to manage their own context during long-horizon tasks using techniques like sparse attention.
  • Perform distillation to combine independently optimized capabilities into a single, cohesive model.

What we're looking for

  • PhD or equivalent practical experience in Computer Science or a related technical field.
  • Demonstrated expertise in deep learning with publications at top ML/NLP conferences or a track record of applying techniques to products.
  • Proficiency in Python and one major deep learning toolkit such as JAX, PyTorch, or TensorFlow.
  • Experience in reinforcement learning for LLMs including RLHF, GRPO, PPO, reward modeling, and scaling laws.
  • Expertise in code generation, repository-level code understanding, and agentic coding systems.
  • Experience with agentic systems involving multi-turn RL, tool-use planning, and long-horizon task execution.
  • Knowledge of distillation and alignment techniques such as on-policy or reward-tilted distillation.
  • Familiarity with long context and efficiency techniques like sparse attention and context compression.

More like this

Similar roles

ML Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

New York, NY 114 days ago $184,700$324,800
Python PyTorch JAX TensorFlow Reinforcement Learning RLHF GRPO PPO Reward Modeling LLMs Deep Learning Agentic Systems Distillation Sparse Attention Coding Agents SWE-Bench

ML Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

New York, NY 114 days ago $184,700$324,800
Python PyTorch JAX TensorFlow Reinforcement Learning RLHF GRPO PPO Reward Modeling LLMs Agentic Systems Distillation Sparse Attention Deep Learning NLP Coding Agents

ML Engineer, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

Cupertino, CA 70 days ago $150,400$277,600
LLM Multi-modal LLM Python PyTorch JAX TensorFlow Deep Learning Synthetic Data Reward Modeling Preference Learning Data Pipelines Agentic Systems Data-centric AI Pre-training Post-training

Machine Learning Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

New York, NY 79 days ago $150,400$277,600
Python PyTorch JAX TensorFlow Deep Learning Foundation Models Large Language Models Reinforcement Learning Vision-Language Modeling Video Generation Data Pipelines Reward Modeling Multimodal Models On-policy Distillation

Machine Learning Researcher, Foundation Models

Apple Inc

Cupertino, CA 79 days ago $150,400$277,600
Python PyTorch JAX TensorFlow Deep Learning Foundation Models Large Language Models Reinforcement Learning Vision-Language Modeling Video Generation Data Pipelines Reward Modeling On-policy Distillation Multimodal Models

Machine Learning Engineer, Apple Foundation Models

Apple Inc

Cary, NC 2 days ago
LLM Reinforcement Learning Python PyTorch JAX Distributed Training Deep Learning Data Filtering Curriculum Learning Model Steering Preference Optimization Synthetic Data Generation Machine Learning