Apple Looks to Hire 'Senior Systems Neuroscientist', Possibly to Improve Siri

Apple late last month updated its official jobs portal with a new vacancy for a 'Senior Systems Neuroscientist' as part of the Cupertino giant's Technology Development team situated in Santa Clara, California, United States. The job listing suggests that Apple is "looking for a neuroscientist who is passionate about the study of the brain and its application to building transformative neurotechnology". While it seems odd for a mainly consumer-front hardware corporation, and with no division specified, this job could be for improvement of Apple's virtual assistant Siri that has been lagging in terms of functionality when compared to counterparts such as Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant.

The listing was first spotted by Japan's Ryota Kanai, and shared on Twitter. Key qualifications for the job include 5-10+ years of experience designing experiments to investigate neural correlates of perception, action, or cognition using human or animal models. This can be linked to the cognitive nature of Siri and the hands-free "Hey Siri!" command.

The listing also requires the applicant to hold "deep expertise" in sensory perception, and extensive research experience in one or all of these fields: multi-sensory and sensorimotor integration, depth perception, decision making, and neural coding and decoding. Apart from that, Apple's future Senior Systems Neuroscientist should ideally be fluent in neural computing and several major programming languages. The applicants should also have knowledge of hardware, software, statistical and signal processing, linear algebra, physiological measurement, and a lot more. 

As for the description of the role, the selected applicant will have to work closely with Apple scientists and engineers to carry out experiments towards technology development at the firm. Essentially, the role aims to hire a person who can create meaningful connections from raw data, possibly using it to hone Siri's skills.