Apple Now Seeking More Software Engineers Than Hardware Engineers

Friday March 1, 2019 9:04 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Software engineering positions have outnumbered hardware engineering positions in Apple job listings for the first time since at least the first quarter of 2016, according to data-driven website Thinknum.


The website claims Apple's "software and services" job listings have topped its hardware engineering listings since the third quarter of 2018.

Thinknum's Joshua Fruhlinger told us that the data is sourced exclusively from Apple's jobs portal and does not include listings on third-party websites. His website began tracking the listings in the first quarter of 2016, so it's unclear if software job listings have ever topped hardware ones before.


Whether accurate or not, the data is meaningful, as Apple has been focusing on growing and expanding its portfolio of services such as the App Store and Apple Music in recent years. Apple is also expected to introduce subscription-based news and video services at an event on March 25 at Steve Jobs Theater.

Apple has also been increasing its emphasis on machine learning and Siri under new AI chief John Giannandrea, with those areas falling under the software engineering category as well.

There are now over 1.4 billion active Apple devices around the world. That saturation coupled with rising prices has led to lower demand for some products. Last quarter, for example, Apple issued its first revenue warning in 16 years due to "fewer iPhone upgrades" than it anticipated.

With hundreds of millions of iPhones now sold, Apple is focused on building out its ecosystem of services and software features surrounding the device, and it obviously needs plenty of software engineers to accomplish that goal.

Tags: Apple job listings, Thinknum
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Menneisyys2
10 months ago
yeah, someone needs to work on new emojis...
Rating: 35 Votes
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cube
10 months ago

This is very misleading. People do not work only on software and not hardware, and visa verse. The line between two gets very blurry when you write code for personal devices, or create a device and need to write code to test it in real world use cases.

Most software engineers do not do hardware.
Rating: 27 Votes
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joshwenke
10 months ago
Good. I think their software quality has been a lot less than the hardware quality.
Rating: 13 Votes
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Baymowe335
10 months ago

yeah, someone needs to work on new emojis...

Or the $45B services business...
Rating: 11 Votes
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fairuz
10 months ago

This is very misleading. People do not work only on software and not hardware, and visa verse. The line between two gets very blurry when you write code for personal devices, or create a device and need to write code to test it in real world use cases.

Generally you're considered a hardware engineer if you write drivers or anything lower.
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Good. I think their software quality has been a lot less than the hardware quality.

I'd maybe say this if it weren't for the MBP keyboard.
Rating: 8 Votes
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twocents
10 months ago
Good! Been using iOS since v1.1 on my 1G iTouch and have to say that for typical user it has gotten a bit complicated and unintuitive. You would be surprised how often people are surprised when I show them the flashlight in Control Center, swipe to backspace in Calculator, 3D Touch shortcuts even. Further, with the A11 and A12 there is plenty of amazing hardware groundwork that needs good software to make the most of it. Cause an iPad is a computer, right?
Rating: 7 Votes
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chucker23n1
10 months ago

If accurate, the data is rather unsurprising


I would correct this to: whether accurate or not, the data is not very meaningful.

This is very misleading. People do not work only on software and not hardware, and visa verse. The line between two gets very blurry when you write code for personal devices, or create a device and need to write code to test it in real world use cases.


A software engineer is unlikely to also do hardware.

A hardware engineer may do some work in the firmware/embedded area, but typically not in higher-level software than that.

Even for a hardware product that largely relies on low-level software like AirPods, chances are software integration like the popup that shows you AirPods are nearby/connected were done by a software team.
Rating: 7 Votes
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Justanotherfanboy
10 months ago

yeah, someone needs to work on new emojis...


Omg, hilarious. /s

But, on the real... I’d bet literally everything I own, against a donut, that the incredibly minuscule portion of Apple’s graphic design team that have ever been even remotely involved with updating emoji designs (you know, like every single other tech company does) to support the latest Unicode additions, is eclipsed by the amount of Googlers working on Doodles.
Rating: 6 Votes
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iRutherford
10 months ago
For a large and wealthy company, it baffles me how Apple can only focus on one thing at a time.
Rating: 5 Votes
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HJM.NL
10 months ago

Or the $45B services business...

It’s about time those services actually start working outside the USA. I’ve been sponsoring Apple with lots of €€ for years now and only seeing crippled half baked services go into action for the so called miraculous ecotrap.these days they’ve become more like an handicap than a selling point.

Messages is hard to use when most friends, colleagues don’t have it. Same for FaceTime. Maps is a disaster compared to google apps as is Siri and iCloud.
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Seriously, when will people on this forum stop posting this c**p? Apple of course adds new emojis as they are added to the Unicode Standard. I think it should be a bannable offence to keep repeating these boring comments on this forum, it's like the new "safari is snappier" but totally unfunny.

I will stop posting this c**p by the time Apple introduces something useful. Thank you!
Rating: 4 Votes

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