Apple Jobs Postings Hint at Possible Siri API For Third Party Apps And More

Yesterday, Siri UI Manager - Dan Keen at Apple tweeted that there were two job openings in the Siri team. One was for a Sr. iOS Software Engineer, the second one was for a iOS Software Engineer and according to AppleInsider there are also three more positions open for "Language Technologies Engineers".

The job postings reveal that Apple is looking for engineers to work on Siri's user interface, new languages and more interesting an API.

Here's the job description for Sr. iOS Software Engineer from the first job listing:

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the conversation view and its many different actions. This includes defining a system that enables a dialog to appear intuitive, a task that involves many subtle UI behaviors in a dynamic, complex system. You will have several clients of your code, so the ability to formulate and support a clear API is needed.

Here's the job description for iOS Software Engineer from the second job listing:

We are looking for an engineer to join the team that implements the UI for Siri. You will primarily be responsible for implementing the content that appears within the conversational view. This is a broad-ranging task - we take every application that Siri interacts with, distill it down to fundamentals, and implement that application's UI in a theme fitting with Siri. Consider it an entire miniature OS within the OS, and you get a good idea of the scope!

The first job description seems to suggest that Apple is indeed developing an API for Siri, which will allow third party developers to access it. It remains to be seen if Apple will open up the API for everyone or be selective in which apps can use the Siri API. Siri currently works with third parties such as Wikipedia, Yelp and Wolfram Alpha. Keen has tweeted that one shouldn't read into it as Siri also interacts with built-in apps, suggesting the job listing may not be referring to third-party apps as we're speculating.

The fact that Apple is hiring "Language Technologies Engineers" is not surprising as Apple has already announced plans to add support for Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Spanish to Siri in 2012. Siri currently can understand and speak the following languages:

• English (United States, United Kingdom, Australia)
• French (France)
• German (Germany)

We can't wait to see what Siri will be able to do next. What's on your wish list?