Apple Inc, formerly Apple Computer, Inc., is an multinational corporation headquartered in Cupertino, California that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software and personal computers. Its best-known hardware products are the Mac line of computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone smartphone, and the iPad tablet computer. Its software includes the OS X and iOS operating systems, the iTunes media browser, the Safari web browser, and the iLife and iWork creativity and production suites. The company was founded on April 1, 1976, and incorporated as Apple Computer, Inc. on January 3, 1977.
Apple maintains 394 retail stores in fourteen countries as well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store. It is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization. The company has about 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time employees worldwide.
Apple also employs more than 3,000 at its Austin location, with employees who work in sales, marketing, and customer serviceHow to get a job at Apple
Apple is one of the largest employers in Silicon Valley and has had explosive employee growth over the last decade. To find contract jobs at Apple, upload your consultant profile on OnContracting, get endorsed by people you worked with and start connecting with recruiters at the staffing agencies and consulting companies that staff ICs, temps and vendors at Apple Computer.
Apple is one of the largest employers for contractor jobs in Silicon Valley and the contract jobs are temporary and don't require a really high bar, so getting a Apple contractor job in San Francisco Bay Area is not as hard as getting a full-time job at Apple.
Tip 1: If you have an in-demand skill, just upload your resume on one of the major job boards like Monster, Dice with your location set to Cupertino or Sunnyvale, CA or Zip Code 94087 and you should get calls from staffing agencies if you are a good fit for one of the thousands of jobs. This would increase your chances of being called rather than if you list Berkeley, Pleasanton or Santa Cruz on your resume as recruiters at staffing agencies are afraid you may not relocate or the travel will be too much for you.
Tip 2: To increase your chances, create your profile on OnContracting. We are the only professional network that recruiters at staffing agencies can access for free and everyone on our platform is open to contract jobs.
Tip 3: Avoid SubContracting Agencies: Subcontracting agencies are Tier 2 agencies that find and submit candidates from job boards to the Direct (Tier 1) vendors of Apple for a referral fee. These are mostly offshore recruiting call-centers and their only advantage is they know who the direct vendor and the recruiter is (a problem we solved for you). Giving your personal details to an unknown offshore agency increases your risk for identity fraud as many of these offshore agencies have poor security. When you get an email or call from a recruiter telling you they have a contractor job at Apple, ask if the recruiter works for the direct vendor, and not as a subcontracting agency or implementation partner to the Tier 1 company .
You can verify the list of direct (Tier 1) vendors of Apple right here. We don't list Apple's subcontractors in our list, so if you get a call from one of them that claims they are direct vendors, ask why they are not listed on OnContracting or call Apple board number and ask for the Procurement Manager to verify this.
Tip 4: Networking with the preferred vendors: More than any other method, your best bet of getting a contractor job at Apple is to connect with a recruiter that places contractors there. Here are tips for how you can find the preferred agencies so you know which recruiter to network with.
Browse the vendors list in the category you are interested above
Click on a vendor's name, a popup tells you more about the company
Click on 'View more' button which takes you to that vendor's page which has tabs for jobs, reviews, recruiters
Check the Contract Jobs tab for their current open jobs
Check the Recruiters tab to see if there are recruiters listed and message them. If not find the recruiters on Linkedin
Based on several surveys, ATS/VMS software company reports and news articles, it is estimated that most large companies have an employee to contractor ratio of 1:1 now. Apple has 65,000 employees in the US and over 30,000 retail employees. We estimate it probably employs ~65,000 contractors for all the non-core work involved in making the company work- like IT, software and map testing, content creation and checking, technical writing, paralegals for drafting contracts, procurement specialists, HR coordinators, recruiters, sourcers, customer service, technical support, delivering groceries, cafeteria, etc. At an average term of 1 year per contract, it would mean that Apple would need to hire ~5,000 contractors every month.
Unfortunately this is pretty rare as most of the positions Apple hires contractors are non-strategic and not something they'd want to add full-time employees for. However, there are reviews that confirm they convert some contractors to full-time. Our estimate of contractor to fulltime conversion would be around 2% or 1,300 out of the 65,000 contractors might get converted every year. Let us know if you have better information.
In most cases, it is better to leverage your Apple experience and land a good full-time position at another company before you complete 12 months. Large companies don't like to keep contractors around for long for co-employment risk reasons. Expect 12-18 months term at the most. Also remember, contracts can be terminated at any time and a 12 month contract does not mean they are obligated to keep you for 12 months.
Tip- Contractors often get comfortable and expect your contract to continue for the entire contract period and get upset when it is terminated suddenly. As a contract 'at will' employee of the stafifng agency, you have no recourse with your staffing agency or Apple if they decide to end your contract early. .
Apple hires contractors from almost every field. Below are some sample contract job titles and what the day to day job involves. Here are examples of the kind of work performed by contractors at Apple for the various job titles and how much they pay.
Software Engineer
The best staffing companies for contract software roles are actually IT consulting companies and not the regular staffing agencies. These include Infosys, Global Infotech, SIS, etc.
Some of the jobs Apple's contractors have reported doing for apple include- Design, implement, and maintain RESTful services used by local and global customers. Manage full life cycle of the services including release and production support. Scala/Play/Cassandra tech stack,
Within Software Engineering some of the more common roles Apple hires as contractors include
Java Developers- from Java Architects, Lead Java Developer with skills in Java server-side development, Java front-end development, Algorithm, Data Structures, Multithreading, Collections framework, Concurrency, Java exception libraries, J2EE, MVC Framework, Spring MVC Framework, Spring Core, IoC, DI, AOP, Restful Web Services, Oracle RDBMS, SQL programming, NoSQL, Mongo DB, Cassandra, Couch
Salary- $50-75/hr on W2 salary
Software QA Engineer
The largest number of contractors for Apple are hired in QA and Testing. The top agency for these kinds of roles is TekSystems. While the most testers are involved in manual testing, these tasks are increasingly automated and so test automation engineers requiring Java, Selenium, etc. are increasingly in demand. Some of the work described by test contractors to us include
Integrate and test various LOB's (lines of business) applications. Provide support for backend fraud detection system and statistical analysis tools.
Implement transactional data extraction, build various test frameworks, maintain and enhance tools for Continuous Integration Testing.
Maintained lab of computers to run automated testing of OS components using Testbot & Python. Created iCloud accounts on different networks to test file syncing & integration with web components.
Validated graphic drivers on Mac OS X for all Apple hardware. OpenGL/3D, OpenCL, games, video/audio playback and streaming, power management, DVD, camera, HDCP, displays, Mac OS X applications.
Performed functionality, performance, regression, compatibility, stress testing.
Salaries for this position range from $30/hr- $50/hr on W2 salary
iOS Apps QA Engineer
Perform quality assurance testing of iOS operating system on multiple devices. Develop and execute test plans for areas of responsibility. Collaborate with iOS native app developers to test new features. Execute regression testing for new builds and app features. Report issues via internal tools using step-by-step recreation instructions, crash logs, photos, videos, and any other relevant data
Salaries- $20-40/hr on W2 salary
Apple Store Genius
The Apple Store Genius hires fulltime employees and contractors. The work includes
Providing technical support for Apple desktops and portables, including software troubleshooting and installation, hardware diagnosis and repair, and iPod and iPhone repairs.
Salaries- $15-$30/hr on W2 salary
Apple Store- Specialist
Some of the comments on the work involved are
Sales of Apple and third-party products, with an emphasis on customer service while maintaining sales and metrics goals. Set up new systems for customers, including software installation and data transfer.
Salaries- $10-25/hr on W2 salary
Business Analyst
Apple hires a number of business analysts to design new operations and processes for one of Apple's thousands of operational and supply chain processes. The work involved for business analyst includes
Analyzing existing manual workflow for a department.
Actively participate in JAD sessions with end-client and technical team to elicit the requirements, client pain points, must-haves v/s like-to-haves and prioritize the requirements.
Interact with product owners to come up with the automated process – developed workflows and use cases for the application.
Salaries- $40-$60/hr on W2 salary
Business Reporting Analyst
"Crafting business metrics optimization for client groups. Design and create dashboards and on-demand reports using Business Objects and SAP. Design and create new tools and solutions."
Salaries for this position range from $40/hr- $65/hr on W2 salary
Mechanical Design Engineer
"Design of AC power cords and retail cables. Perform laboratory experiments to validate mechanical specifications and generate reports. Create mechanical drawings, review first article parts, and drive products into production."
Support Engineer
"Documentation, case resolution, workarounds, bug filing, resolution, coding samples, and custom solutions for customers. Multinational/multi-timezone support base using internal tools, interacting with various product groups. Create API documentation, API examples and custom tools"
Salaries for this position range from $35/hr- $55/hr on W2 salary
Technical Support Tier1 Helpdesk
"Answer customer questions about their iOS devices. Help customers understand how their devices interact with iTunes, iCloud and various apps. Utilizing a computer program to access customers PC’s or Mac’s and directing them with iOS updates, Carrier updates and backing up and restoring their devices in iTunes as well as iCloud."
Salaries for this position range from $12/hr-23/hr on W2 salary
SAP Functional Consultant
"Involved in various stages of an implementation right from project preparation which includes project plan and scope, business blue print, gap analysis. Prepared functional specifications for different components. Involved in data mapping, gathering business requirements through interaction with end users."
Salaries for this position range from $60/hr-$100/hr on W2 salary
While engineering dominates contractor hiring, Apple also hires non-technical contract workers for jobs as sales associates, customer support, designers, finance and accounting, recruiters, data validation and visual data specialists. These are great contract gigs in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Shenzhen and Singapore. These are great opportunities for entry level or less experienced people and build out their resume.
Maps POI Editor
"Ensure POIs and Business listings' data integrity in the US and abroad, Run evaluation tools, ensure data integrity, Provide feedback to software development teams, Work with development team on creating and evaluating application test tools, Create/maintain standard responses and process documentation"
Vendors specializing in this role: Addeco, Mindlance, Volt Technical Resources
Salaries for Maps POI editors range from $10/hr-$15/hr on W2 salary
Localization and Translation
"Localization testing and linguistic check (Russian and English languages, locales), Analyzing a relevance of Map’s, App Store and iTunes search results. Analyzing a relevance of suggested driving routes. Verifying info from different data providers."
Salaries for this position range from $13/hr- $18/hr on W2 salary
Recruiter and HR (Onsite)
A common position for contract are Apple HR/Recruiting positions. These could be technical sourcers whose job is to search the world for top talent. Other positions include Recruiters, HR generalists and HR coordinators that arrange screen, arrange interviews, paperwork, schedules, etc.
Salary- $15-50/hr on W2
Visual data specialists (Onsite)
A common contract position that Apple hires for. The roles involves reviewing the maps for accuracy.
Contract hourly rates for visual data specialists $13-16/hr on W2 salary
App Store Content Analyst/Reviewer (Onsite at Sunnyvale/Cupertino)
Apple has a lot of sites and an appstore that need to verify applications or content being submitted and these need to be done by humans. So Apple hires Content Reviewers/Analysts for this work.
Hourly rates- $16-$25/hr on W2 salary
Apple Bus Driver
Hourly Rates- $13.50/hr in SF and $12.50/hr in the peninsula. These jobs come with benefits like 1.5x times overtime pay.
Found your own project with a Manager you worked at before? Need an approved vendor to payroll you for the project with the lowest markup? Contact one of the smaller approved vendors and ask for 90% of the bill rate or ask the manager to route you through the Managed Service Provider they use like Geometric Results GRI.
Overall Apple is one of the most desirable place to work for as fulltime or contractors. While you don't get free food like you do at Google, and while the work may not be very satisfactory, it is a good way to learn the ins and outs of working at a large tech company. Jobs like map testing, etc may not be as valuable but working as a contractor in IT may expose you to cool technologies and lend credibility to your work experience that you can leverage in your fulltime job search. Read Apple contractor reviews for details on the Reviews tab.
Apple contractor salaries are typical for an an in-demand tech company. About average. You can see details on the Rates tab.
Apple is great place to work with many many exciting projects. As long as you find the right project, right team and right Manager you can expect to do good work, be recognized and grow.
Apple is an awesome place to work as you 'feel' like you are part of something cool, all your friends are envious and you might have illusions that you are on the way to being Steve Jobs. However the difference between treatment of full-time employees and contractors at Apple makes it a pretty bad place from a contractor standpoint. I think it is deliberate and HR has made most Managers fearful- that they are not supposed to treat contractors like employees else Apple might get sued for not making them employees and will have to convert all contractors to full-time and give them all the benefits. As a result some Managers go overboard and treat contractors like untouchables and 2nd class citizens. Some of the things I've experienced- not being able to participate in some team meetings, beerbashes (not that I drink), team lunches, Christmas parties, no access to Apple training, kept in the dark about product plans, etc. As if just because I am a contractor, I am suddenly more likely to be corruptible and do bad things.
Great company, great projects (even for contractors) and great work environment.
