Last week, Apple announced the results of yet another financially successful quarter, with revenues of $123.9 billiondriven by the iPhone 13, cloud-based services, the Mac, and other products. As the company heads into 2022, it can only hope that new products will allow it to maintain this sales momentum.
If you’re interested in working for Apple, the company’s expanding product roadmap offers lots of possibilities. Do you want to work with cloud-based technologies? Chances are good that a role might align with your skills and experience. Interested in mobile hardware? Same deal. But which skills does Apple seek at the moment?
For an answer, we can turn to Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country. Based on data from the past 90 days, we can make some solid assumptions about what Apple’s hiring managers want now:
That Python should lead this list might not come as much of a surprise. The ultra-popular programming language has gained quite a bit of momentum over the past few years as technologists have turned to it for highly specialized (and lucrative) functions, including data science and machine learning. Just this month, for the second time in a row, Pythonseized the TIOBE Index’s Programming Language of the Year award (given to the language that sees its ranking increase the most in a 12-month period).
Interested in learning Python? Start by visiting Python.org for its handy beginner’s guide. If you’re a visual learner, Microsoft’s video series, “Python for Beginners,” features dozens of short lessons (most under five minutes in length; none longer than 13 minutes) in Python programming. Once you’ve established a knowledge base, consider tutorials from Datacamp (whose Introduction to Python course includes 11 videos and 57 exercises), Udemy (which offers a variety of free introduction courses, including one for “absolute beginners”), and Codecademy.
Like many other tech companies, Apple is perpetually interested in technologists with a firm grasp of the principles of software engineering, development, and debugging. Extensive knowledge of Apple’s own programming languages and platforms (such as Swift, Objective-C, and macOS) is likely also necessary for most jobs with the company.
Going forward, Apple wants to make its apps and services (such as Siri) “smarter” via machine learning and artificial intelligence (A.I.). A firm grasp of machine-learning and A.I. tools could boost your chances of landing a position; Apple is certainly paying quite a bit to retain the specialists it currently employs.
