The Highest-Paying Jobs At Apple [RANKED]

Salary: $41,824

Mac Geniuses are super important to the shopping experience at Apple's stores. But they don't receive a lot of love from Apple, it seems (at least in terms of salary).

Salary: $51,287

Apple needs some people to help run its stores. Assistant store managers get paid better than the rank-and-file Mac Geniuses and sales representatives.

Salary: $52,206

After you've spent a little bit of time at an Apple Store as a Genius, you'll get paid a little bit more.

Lead Mac Geniuses get paid about half what a good software engineer at Apple gets paid.

Salary: $74,457

Account executives manage business-to-business relationships and are tasked with maintaining them. Apple has a bunch of relationships with advertisers and hardware component manufacturers, so it needs people to manage them.

Salary: $85,865

Business analysts are working away to make sure Apple is a well-organized and well-designed company internally. They're there to make sure Apple's business is running smoothly.

Salary: $89,728

Apple also has to have a good team of quantitative crunchers to make sure its business is running smoothly and its finances are in line.

Salary: $92,733

Apple also has to make sure the software it's shipping doesn't have bugs and will be well-received by Apple customers. That's where QA engineers come in.

Salary: $95,713

With a ton of suppliers and factories, Apple has to carefully manage logistics to make sure its products get shipped on time. Systems engineers make sure the chain isn't broken and manage Apple's risk.

Salary: $101,716

Project managers have to make sure all the bits and pieces of a specific project come together and are finished on time. They're overseeing a bunch of different disciplines within Apple.

Salary: $105,270

Firmware engineers make sure all of Apple's software plays nice with its hardware. It's a critical role that requires expertise in both hardware and software.

Salary: $106,446

Test engineers develop processes that stress test products in order to assure they meet Apple's standards for quality. They're responsible for creating a testing process that ensures every Apple device shipped is fully functional and free of defects.

Salary: $107,740

This is actually one of the lowest-paying senior roles at Apple. Still, senior systems engineers get paid more than twice as much as a typical retail employee.

Salary: $109,415

Apple also has to crunch through a ton of data — whether it's usage data, serving apps through the App Store, or making sure some of its web-connected services like Siri are working. Database administrators make sure Apple's databases run quickly and don't go offline.

Salary: $110,784

Software engineers are the "brains" behind Apple's applications and operating systems. For comparison, software engineers at Google make just a little bit more on average, at $118,982.

Salary: $113,577

Hardware engineers are around to make sure Apple's hardware is up to snuff. Given that Apple is, at its heart, a hardware company, it makes enough sense that hardware engineers get paid slightly more than software engineers.

Salary: $119,150

Apple's products also face a lot of traditional mechanical problems, like dealing with heat and moving parts. Mechanical engineers make sure Apple's products don't fall apart as a result of trivial problems.

Salary: $119,742

Design is a hugely important part of Apple. The company pays its product designers very well — often more than a typical software engineer.

Salary: $120,182

Product managers make sure each product gets shipped while meeting Apple's bar for quality, and interact with just about every part of the process. They're in touch with marketing, design, software, and hardware engineers — and everything in between.

Salary: $130,130

Senior software engineers get paid slightly less than senior hardware engineers. At this level, you're probably working on some of Apple's most sensitive products, like maps or the iPhone operating system.

Salary: $138,753

Once you've spent enough time at Apple, you'll be promoted up to a senior hardware engineer. That's when you start making big bucks.

Salary: $167,260

Surprise! Steve Jobs has said time and again that Apple is a company that sits at the crossroads of design and technology. At its core, it has a bit of creative DNA (infused by music, mostly) that makes its products hum in a way companies like Google can't quite match.

Obviously the guys in charge of the overall visual appearance of a product and how it communicates visually with consumers is a key role at Apple, and a highly valuable one.

(Note: we're assuming Apple design guru Jony Ive actually gets paid much, much more than this.)

Here's the fabulous life of Sir Jony Ive, the genius behind Apple's design>>