Apple Logo
The Apple logo is pictured at a retail store in the Marina neighborhood in San Francisco, California April 23, 2014. Reuters

Apple Inc hires engineers from Nike FuelBand to join its iWatch team while the company's Apple Maps engineer was said to have been poached by Uber.

Apple has hired two engineers - Ryan Bailey and Jon Gale - who previously worked with Nike's FuelBand, 9to5Mac found out.

Bailey, on his LinkedIn, wrote that he currently works as Mechanical Design Engineer for Apple.

On his profile he wrote that his working on wearable devices and consumer electronics product development in cross functional mechanical, electrical, materials and algorithm testing to inform data driven design decisions.

His previous responsibility as FuelBand's Hardware Engineer includes:

  • Acting as feedback loop providing engineering recommendations to all major engineering leads; mechanical, electrical, algorithm, software and product architects.
  • Support local product development team as well as Asia Operations team.
  • Work closely with internal and external partners to encourage efficient and integrated decision making.
  • Drive durability and process improvements to improve FuelBand 1 and SE durability via engineering recommendations and custom lab and field testing. Develop and refine custom test protocols to accurately simulate in-field hardware defects.

Jon Gale, on the other hand, wrote on LinkedIn that he currently works with Apple as Sensing Systems Engineer

Working with Nike, he was tasked to define both the hardware and firmware architectures for Nike Digital Sport products.

"Additionally, I managed the development of product firmware through partner companies. Responsible for delivering firmware to validate the design in a manufacturing environment, define and implementation of custom protocols to interact with other components of the Nike ecosystem, and translate high-level product requirements into actionable, testable definitions. I personally owned the delivery of firmware for the Nike FuelBand product line," Gale wrote.

It has also been reported that Apple had just recently hired Tag Heuer's sales director Patrick Pruniaux to give iWatch the "Swiss made" label.

Meanwhile, Uber had reportedly recruited one of Apple's senior engineering managers for Apple Maps, Chris Blumenberg, according to unnamed sources for The Information.

Blumenberg had been instrumental for Apple for being one of the first engineers that created software for iPhones and as senior leader for Apple's iOS team.