How to get a job at Apple. Ainura Kayshibaeva's experience

An engineer at Apple shares her professional journey, explaining how she joined an international tech company through an internship, which skills were key, and how to adapt to life and work abroad.

Aynur Kayshibaeva, City: Austin, Software Engineer at Apple, LinkedIn

About Me

I work at Apple as a Software Engineer on the Content Management Engineering Team. We handle content management of any type within the Apple ecosystem. I joined the company in 2022.

How to Get into Apple

Initially, I joined the company through an internship. This was my first step, which allowed me to get to know the future team, processes, and requirements in practice. During the internship, I worked on real tasks, demonstrated my approach to work, interaction with the team, and problem-solving. At the end of the internship, I was offered a full-time position after graduating from university. This path proved to be quite effective for me because the internship gave me the opportunity to understand how well we fit together without unnecessary pressure or expectations.

The hiring process was standard for a large tech company but well-structured and multi-stage. The first stage was an interview with a recruiter, where my professional background, motivation, and reasons for interest in the company were discussed. General resume questions were also asked, with the goal of assessing the candidate's fit with the profile and company expectations.

The next stage was communication with a technical recruiter, where the focus shifted to technical experience: projects and technologies I had worked with. After that, there was a technical interview with the engineering team, where basic knowledge, algorithms, data structures, LeetCode-style problems were tested, and past and current projects were discussed. The questions included behavioral and situational ones to understand the approach to solving complex or ambiguous tasks and the results of those decisions.

The final stage was an interview with the hiring manager, the direct supervisor under whom I would work. The main focus was on the professional path, behavioral questions, strengths, interests, and assessing which team and role the candidate would fit best.

Overall, the process is comprehensive but logical. Within a relatively short time, it is important for interviewers to evaluate the candidate on several criteria: professional knowledge, approach to problem-solving, thinking style, communication skills, willingness to learn, and overall level of professionalism. The combination of these factors determines whether the candidate receives an offer or not.

Tips for Those Who Want to Join an International Company

It is quite possible to join an international company because if one person has done it, it means it is accessible to everyone else. International companies are not looking for perfect candidates; they are looking for reliable and understandable people with whom they can work across different countries, languages, and cultures.

It is important to clearly explain your thoughts, ask questions, and structure information so that everyone understands it. An indicator of readiness for international work is the ability to calmly discuss any work task.

A strong professional foundation is also valued. International companies rarely hire candidates with potential but no experience. For engineers, this means fundamental knowledge, algorithms, systems thinking, and the ability to write clean code. For other roles, it means understanding your function and value.

A strong professional foundation means that companies are interested in solid mid-level specialists, not people who are "a little bit of everything." Interviews are not about reciting your resume but demonstrating solutions: what problem you solved, what options you considered, and why you chose that specific solution. This is especially important when you are speaking to people from other countries and cultures.

In an international company, respect for different communication styles, the ability to accept feedback without emotion, and the ability to negotiate are valued. When talking about practical experience, it is better to show real projects and internships rather than abstract achievements.

Do not lose heart if you do not manage to get into major offices like Google, Apple, or Amazon right away. You can start with a regional office or an international startup. A career path in an international company usually consists of several steps. Employers are looking for people who think clearly, speak clearly, and know how to take responsibility. Everything else—accent, language, passport—is secondary.

Work Specifics

Currently, I work in a team that deals with content strategy, but due to confidentiality requirements, I cannot go into details about specific products or internal systems. Overall, our team develops platform solutions that help manage content and scale its usage within the company's ecosystem. From a technical perspective, we build services based on microservice architecture. These are distributed systems where each service is responsible for its own function and can evolve and scale independently. This approach allows for scaling, increasing reliability, and implementing changes faster.

My role in the team is backend development. I work as a Java developer, participate in API design, implement business logic, integrate services, and ensure stable system operation. In addition to writing code, I actively interact with other engineers and adjacent teams so that our solutions are not only technically correct but also truly solve business problems. My work is at the intersection of engineering and product: it is important not just to implement a feature but to understand how it will be used, scaled, and fit into the larger system.

In my work, I mainly focus on the backend. The key programming language is Java. We develop services that process business logic and interact with other services via APIs. Since we use a microservice approach, special attention is paid to contracts between services, their reliability, and backward compatibility. We use standard tools for API development and testing, implement automated testing practices, monitor code quality, write tests, log, and monitor the system.

In addition to technical tools, team collaboration tools are important: clear documentation, task tracking, and regular discussions of solutions with various teams. In distributed teams where colleagues are located in different parts of the world, this is critical for synchronous work and mutual understanding.

The main challenges in my position are related to scale: when systems serve a large number of users and teams, even small changes require a careful approach. It is important to think about how functionality will work under load, how changes will affect other services, and how to safely implement them. It is also important to balance speed and quality: the business needs new features, but errors in platform solutions can have a wide-ranging impact. Therefore, a lot of time is spent on testing, backward compatibility, and phased releases to ensure the product is user-friendly.

Working in a large interdisciplinary team requires coordinating decisions between engineers, product managers, and other stakeholders who have different priorities. This requires not only technical expertise but also communication skills, as well as continuous learning and flexibility to make the right decisions in the long term.

At my position, systems thinking is important—seeing the entire system as a whole and understanding the consequences of decisions, basic engineering skills, the ability to write maintainable code, and maintaining quality under time pressure. Communication is a key skill: you need to discuss solutions, explain complex technical things in simple language, and find compromises between teams. The ability to adapt and learn is also important, as requirements and context are constantly changing.

The company pays great attention to the professional development of employees. Learning here is continuous: there is an opportunity to develop both in your own technical specialization and at the intersection of teams. Practical learning, knowledge sharing, and mentoring help improve skills and better understand the work of the team and products. Internal educational initiatives are supported, technical sessions are held, knowledge is shared, and mentoring programs are conducted.

The company provides opportunities for horizontal growth: you can move from team to team, change focus, or expand your role.

Working in an international team differs from a local one: different cultures, approaches, and communication styles. People perceive deadlines, feedback, and discussion formats differently. In such teams, communication is especially important: you need to clearly formulate your thoughts, record agreements in writing, and ask clarifying questions. Working across different time zones requires self-organization, respect for others' time, and the ability to plan tasks for asynchronous team progress.

The advantage of an international environment is the diversity of experience and approaches, which makes decisions more balanced and helps professional growth. Internal processes in international teams are often better structured: documentation, transparency, and scalability of solutions. Among the difficulties are communication and speed due to time zone differences, which requires more effort to align understanding between teams. An international team is oriented towards growth and scale, while a local one is oriented towards speed and proximity to context. Both formats have their strengths.

Professional development can be compared to the value of the company: the more you invest in developing skills, work quality, and the ability to create value for the team and users, the higher your professional value. It does not grow instantly and linearly but as a cumulative effect of continuous learning and practice. Technologies change, and if you stop learning, the assessment of your value will decrease over time. For long-term success, it is important to treat your career as a product: regularly invest in yourself, improve work quality, and think ahead, not just about short-term results.

About Life Abroad

In my case, I first moved to the US, and only then did I search for a new professional path. I made the decision to change careers while already being here: I switched from the financial sector to computer science. To do this, I entered a second bachelor's program and graduated from Columbia University.

This path gave me time and space to calmly restructure. I gained fundamental knowledge, understood market requirements, and gradually entered the new profession through study and practice. It was a conscious, but probably not the fastest route.

Moving with a job already found, of course, provides more stability and reduces risks, especially financial. However, the path through moving and studying can also be justified if a person wants to radically change professions or continue their career in a new context.

Building a new environment is an important aspect. It is necessary to realistically assess your goals, resources, and time horizon, because both options work. The key here is not the sequence of steps, but the willingness to invest in yourself and move steadily towards your goal.

In my case, it was not an international move, but an internal relocation within the US: I moved from New York to Austin, Texas. The company fully took on the organization and covered all expenses related to the move. The process was well-structured: at each stage, it was clear what was happening.

If we talk about differences in corporate culture, then in the American environment, especially in large companies, openness and directness of communication are valued. It is expected that an employee can calmly express their opinion, ask questions, and discuss solutions, even if they disagree, provided the approach is constructive and respectful.

There is also a high level of personal responsibility and trust. Employees are given enough freedom in how they perform tasks and plan their time, but in return, a mature attitude towards deadlines and results is expected. If a deadline is set, the work must be completed by that time. There is no micromanagement here, and no one will constantly monitor the process for you.

Special note should be made of the emphasis on work-life balance. Overtime is not considered the norm, and the quality and long-term effect of decisions are often more important than a quick result. Overall, corporate culture is more oriented towards dialogue, responsibility, and predictability. This requires adaptation, but in the long term, it creates a healthy and effective work environment.

Tips for those planning to live and work abroad: it is important to accept that adaptation takes time. Even with a strong professional base, life and work in another country is a new environment, and you should not expect everything to be familiar and easy right away. It is important to show patience with yourself here.

Equally important is the language of communication—not just knowing the language, but understanding how people communicate, give feedback, and make decisions.

It is also important to invest in yourself—in education, new skills, and professional connections, especially abroad, where past experience is not always automatically valued.

Finally, it is worth being flexible and open, not constantly comparing how things were "at home" and how they are "here," but trying to understand the logic of the new environment and take the best from it. It is important to build your own support system—people, routines, interests, and work. Successful life and career abroad is not only about work but also about resilience in different areas of life.