Group Head Speculative Expeditionary Prototyping
Apple builds products that become part of everyday life. When new capabilities arrive, the question is not only what can be done, but what should be done, and what will be lived.
The Exploratory Prototyping Studio is a small, high leverage group that helps Apple discover product truths before they look obvious on a roadmap. We do this through expeditionary prototyping: timeboxed explorations that combine field sensing, rapid making, and rigorous critique. The output is not a presentation. It is a set of artifacts and prototypes that can be handled, tested, debated, and improved.
We are seeking a Group Head to lead this practice across Apple. You will build the conditions for cross functional discovery, and you will personally lead expeditions that convert uncertainty into legible opportunity, risk visibility, and product direction.
In this role, you will establish and lead a program of speculative expeditions that connect emerging technologies with lived experience. You will work across Human Interface, Industrial Design, engineering, research, privacy, security, operations, and marketing to surface implications early, and to make them tangible through prototypes and artifacts.
Speculative here does not mean fantasy. It means disciplined imagination under real constraints. It means building credible prototypes of experiences that are plausible within Apple's ecosystem, and using those prototypes as instruments for decision making.
You will recruit and lead a small team of makers and researchers with unusual range. You will create repeatable methods, toolchains, and rituals that help Apple see around corners without leaving behind its standards for quality, privacy, and trust.
- Demonstrated leadership building and guiding small, high output teams in exploratory product contexts
- Track record of converting ambiguous opportunity spaces into prototypes that materially influenced product direction
- Ability to convene across silos, identify unexpected connections among individuals and teams, and turn those connections into durable collaborations
- Deep comfort working at the seam of engineering, design, and research, with evidence of translating between disciplines without diluting rigor
- Strong maker practice, able to move from concept to artifact to working prototype with a high bar for craft and legibility
- Systems thinking fluency, including second and third order effects, unintended consequences, and long tail behavioral and cultural impacts
- Excellent writing and presentation skill, able to communicate complex ideas to mixed audiences, including skeptical stakeholders
- Experience designing and running workshops, crit formats, and review rituals that produce learning, not consensus theater
- Define and lead an expeditionary prototyping program, including selection of exploration themes, pacing, and methods for closing the loop into product work
- Lead cross functional expeditions that combine field sensing, prototyping, and critique to produce decision grade evidence
- Build high fidelity prototypes and artifacts that make implications legible early, including trust, consent, agency, clarity, failure modes, and social use patterns
- Establish a repeatable practice of artifact review, including internal salons, crits, and prototype demonstrations that build shared judgment across teams
- Create toolchains and templates that accelerate exploratory work while maintaining Apple's bar for quality, privacy, and security
- Partner with product teams to translate speculative findings into actionable recommendations, experiment plans, and roadmap options
- Serve as connective tissue across the organization, strengthening networks of collaboration and enabling new inquiry through well designed conversation starters
- Coach and mentor makers, engineers, and researchers in disciplined speculative practice, raising the organization's tolerance for ambiguity without lowering standards
- Represent the Studio through internal briefings and selected external engagements, talks, demos, or exhibitions as appropriate
- Advanced degree beyond a bachelor's in a field that integrates technical practice with human meaning, examples include Human Computer Interaction, Design, Media Arts, Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Technology, Anthropology, or Engineering with demonstrated cross disciplinary work
- 10 plus years of experience spanning prototyping, product development, and research adjacent practice, including evidence of impact on shipped products or widely adopted tools
- Portfolio of work that is independently legible, including shipped products, prototypes, published artifacts, exhibited work, patents, or equivalent proof of original contribution
- Evidence of end to end making under real constraints, including building, testing, refining, and delivering work that others can use
- Comfort operating in exploratory contexts where the right question is still being discovered
- Ability to lead with taste and judgment, not only execution, and to hold a high bar for craft in prototypes and artifacts
- Experience presenting provocative work to skeptical audiences and converting critique into improved prototypes rather than softened ideas
- Practical understanding of the responsibility of building experiences used at massive scale
- Willingness to travel occasionally for team collaboration, field sensing, or conference participation
- Demonstrated practice in design fiction, speculative design, or adjacent methods applied as product discovery rather than storytelling for its own sake
- Experience bridging software, hardware, and service ecosystems through prototypes that feel coherent across touchpoints
- Background in entrepreneurship or studio building, including operating with limited resources and high standards
- Track record of invention contributions, such as patents, publications, or widely used frameworks and tools
- Experience with modern intelligence systems used as product material, including evaluation of experience quality beyond benchmark scores
- Evidence of community building inside organizations, creating durable collaboration networks that improved discovery and delivery
At Apple, base pay is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. This provides the opportunity to progress as you grow and develop within a role. The base pay range for this role is between $240,000 and $420,000, and your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location.
Apple employees also have the opportunity to become an Apple shareholder through participation in Apple's discretionary employee stock programs. Apple employees are eligible for discretionary restricted stock unit awards, and can purchase Apple stock at a discount if voluntarily participating in Apple's Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You'll also receive benefits including: Comprehensive medical and dental coverage, retirement benefits, a range of discounted products and free services, and for formal education related to advancing your career at Apple, reimbursement for certain educational expenses including tuition.
Candidates should be adept at the expedition as the unit of work: a short, disciplined journey into an emerging possibility, returning with artifacts that let the organization argue with reality before reality arrives.
Your measure of success will be the degree to which your expeditions produce legible insights that shift product direction, surface new opportunities, or reveal hidden risks. You will be measured on how many prototypes you and your team create and build, and our internal metrics as to the degree and voracity by which these speculative prototypes help Apple and your team’s stakeholders make decisions in the face of uncertainty.
The Group Head role is about institutionalizing this practice: building the team, the methods, the rituals, and the networks that make exploration a repeatable source of product insight.