Why do you want to work at Apple?

"I applied online for a mid-level IC3 software engineering role in Apple's hardware org, and a recruiter reached out after the team liked my resume. After a short recruiter chat, I got a 24-hour Python take-home, then a 45-minute technical screen where I walked through the project and solved a palindrome-style coding question. The final loop was remote and split over two days, with six interviews total: a friendly hiring manager chat, a loose AI/system design round, and four Python rounds covering coding, class design, and debugging. Most of the interviewers were nice and the questions felt fair, but the debugging round was the hardest for me and the very last round felt much more like getting grilled. I got the rejection the following Monday, and they would not give any final-round feedback."

"I got into Apple through an internal referral and interviewed for two EPM roles, but I completed the full process only for Siri. The Siri process took about two months from late January to late March, started with just recruiter emails instead of a recruiter call, then a short hiring manager chat, then a six person loop of 30 minute interviews, and then two additional director conversations. The whole thing felt much more casual than other big tech interviews I have done, with a lot of behavioral and project walkthrough questions, a lot of time left for my questions, and almost no real technical grilling. The most unusual parts were how many senior people I met, including directors after the loop, and the fact that my hiring manager came back in the loop and asked me zero interview questions. I passed the interviews, but I am still negotiating because the level and compensation came in lower than I expected."

"I got into Apple through an internal referral and interviewed for two EPM roles, but I completed the full process only for Siri. The Siri process took about two months from late January to late March, started with just recruiter emails instead of a recruiter call, then a short hiring manager chat, then a six person loop of 30 minute interviews, and then two additional director conversations. The whole thing felt much more casual than other big tech interviews I have done, with a lot of behavioral and project walkthrough questions, a lot of time left for my questions, and almost no real technical grilling. The most unusual parts were how many senior people I met, including directors after the loop, and the fact that my hiring manager came back in the loop and asked me zero interview questions. I passed the interviews, but I am still negotiating because the level and compensation came in lower than I expected."

"I got into Apple through an internal referral and interviewed for two EPM roles, but I completed the full process only for Siri. The Siri process took about two months from late January to late March, started with just recruiter emails instead of a recruiter call, then a short hiring manager chat, then a six person loop of 30 minute interviews, and then two additional director conversations. The whole thing felt much more casual than other big tech interviews I have done, with a lot of behavioral and project walkthrough questions, a lot of time left for my questions, and almost no real technical grilling. The most unusual parts were how many senior people I met, including directors after the loop, and the fact that my hiring manager came back in the loop and asked me zero interview questions. I passed the interviews, but I am still negotiating because the level and compensation came in lower than I expected."

"I applied online for a mid-level IC3 software engineering role in Apple's hardware org, and a recruiter reached out after the team liked my resume. After a short recruiter chat, I got a 24-hour Python take-home, then a 45-minute technical screen where I walked through the project and solved a palindrome-style coding question. The final loop was remote and split over two days, with six interviews total: a friendly hiring manager chat, a loose AI/system design round, and four Python rounds covering coding, class design, and debugging. Most of the interviewers were nice and the questions felt fair, but the debugging round was the hardest for me and the very last round felt much more like getting grilled. I got the rejection the following Monday, and they would not give any final-round feedback."

"The whole process took about three months from the first screen in late November or early December to finishing in mid-March. Apple felt tighter than other companies because I had two real screens before the onsite, and the engineer screen was already basically an in-depth system design round. Every onsite round was tied pretty closely to the actual job on this observability team, especially storage migration, host cost, and working across a matrix organization. The most unusual part for me was the cross-org partnership round with a cost management stakeholder, and the so-called code review that turned into live coding from scratch. After the loop I waited about four weeks and heard they were still interviewing other candidates, which matched the feeling that they were being very selective about exact fit for this role."

"A sourcer had been nudging me on LinkedIn for a while, so I never did a normal recruiter screen. Once I sent my resume, two hiring managers in the same Siri AI/ML org wanted to talk, so Apple ran one combined process for both EPM roles instead of making me do two separate loops. I did two hiring manager screens, then a joint onsite with a data science manager, an ML engineering manager, another behavioral round with one of the hiring managers, and a final conversation with a very senior engineering leader. The whole thing felt extremely team-dependent and very niche, especially the ML metrics parts, which is what made it different from more generic big-tech TPM loops. I finished in early December and got rejected."