UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Logan Pratt always wanted to work for Apple. His dream came true when he landed an internship with the company during his third year as an undergraduate student in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). Now, the 2021 IST graduate is a senior software engineer at Apple. He talks about landing the job, working on the latest tech and what he wants students to know about seeking a similar career path.
Pratt’s career at Apple started with a student internship in 2020. Due to COVID-19, it was a fully remote experience that ran from May to August.
“Even though I was working out of my parents’ basement, the company did so much to ensure interns still felt the Apple culture with swag and virtual events like gaming, competitions and lunch chats,” Pratt said.
He worked on the App Store Connect (ASC) Server Engineering team, learning how ASC works and helping to fix minor bugs. On the last day of his internship, he was informed that he would receive an offer from Apple following graduation in May 2021.
“That July, I started a full-time position on the same team I interned with — this time as a software engineer,” Pratt said. “The team had just started working on the ASC Game Center Public Application Programming Interface and User Interface Redesign project, which consisted of migrating old legacy code into a new micro service.”
Over time, he gained more knowledge and ownership of the Game Center project, helping developers create, maintain and release leaderboards and achievements for their games. In October 2024, he was promoted to a senior software engineer on the team.
“My role didn't change much,” he said. “I just became more driven to make sure our features worked properly and efficiently, while coordinating with the many other teams that depend on our data to serve these leaderboards and achievements to players' devices.”
That included working on two new Game Center features for the next iPhone, iPad and Mac releases, which were announced at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June. Dating back to 1983, WWDC is an annual Apple event that hosts developers, students and media to showcase upcoming software and features, like this year’s new Apple Games app.
“This project was a massive team effort, with hundreds of people — from client user interface and design teams to business, marketing and more — collaborating to make sure the app is a success,” Pratt said.
Apple selected Pratt to present a developer session for WWDC called “Engage Players With the Apple Games App,” which shows game developers how to use the new app and its features to increase engagement and visibility while creating an exciting player experience.
“The presentation was a lot of work — creating outlines, sourcing information from the other Apple teams, developing a keynote, working with design to create the needed visuals and rehearsing and revising many times over to get it just right,” he said. “I recorded the video in a studio with makeup, wardrobe, a director and a producer. It was a surreal experience and a huge honor.”
Pratt encourages current and future students to keep sight of their career goals and take every opportunity to make them happen.
“In the tech world, it's important to always stay curious,” he said. “Keep up with the latest technologies, try to create an app or automate something you do every day. Having the experience of turning an idea into functioning software is huge in this industry — real projects look great on a resume.”
According to Pratt, software engineering interviews are notoriously hard tests, so students will need to dedicate time to studying the data structures and algorithms commonly used in coding interviews. And technical skill isn’t the only thing that matters.
“Communication is extremely important,” he said. “Being able to communicate your thought process, be receptive to feedback and have an overall good attitude goes a long way in both interviews and the actual job.”