Arun Thomas is a distinguished Staff Software Engineer and Engineering Tech Lead with over 13 years of expertise in building and scaling machine learning platforms, ad-serving technologies, and large-scale experimentation systems. Based in Cupertino, California, he drives critical initiatives at Apple Inc., where he has been instrumental in redefining the company’s Ads ecosystem through pioneering privacy-compliant experimentation, cutting-edge real-time systems, and AI-powered infrastructure integrations. His work has consistently advanced Apple’s ability to deliver high-performance, privacy-first advertising at global scale.
At Apple, Arun led the development of the ML Experimentation Platform for Apple Ads, significantly increasing experimentation capacity and velocity while ensuring strict compliance with privacy frameworks such as ATT and LAT. He drove architectural innovations that cut deployment times in half and elevated system scalability, seamlessly integrating ad infrastructure with Apple’s AI/ML stack to unlock advanced personalization and large-scale indexing. Beyond technical execution, Arun provides strategic leadership—defining cross-functional roadmaps, mentoring engineers, and presenting innovations at high-impact forums including Apple Tech Talks and the ML Summit.
Previously, Arun held engineering roles at Yahoo (Flurry Analytics), Cisco Systems, and Qualcomm, where he built high-performance analytics platforms, designed automated infrastructure solutions, and advanced next-generation wireless modem algorithms. He holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Purdue University and a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.
Arun is also a recognized innovator, having won multiple awards, including the Best Hackathon Winner (Apple Ads) and Yahoo’s Best Tech Pulse Paper. Outside of his engineering responsibilities, he has led Apple-wide forums to promote knowledge sharing across experimentation and machine learning teams.