Jeff Williams is Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, making him primarily responsible for the company’s worldwide operations and procurement. Born in 1963, Williams holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Duke University. Williams has held his current role at Apple since December 2015.
Among leading worldwide operations, Williams is also responsible for other initiatives at Apple, including customer service and support, health and wellbeing efforts, and Apple Watch engineering development. Apple’s Industrial Design and Human Interface Design teams have been reporting to Williams since the departure of Jony Ive in 2019.
Williams worked at IBM from 1985 to 1998 in various engineering and operations roles, before leaving for Apple in 1998 as head of Worldwide Procurement. In 2004, Williams was promoted to Vice President of Operations, before playing a significant role in supply chain management of the original iPhone in 2007. Shortly after, Williams expanded his leadership in 2010, leading worldwide operations for all Apple products since.
Williams is credited with leading the engineering and development efforts of the original Apple Watch in 2014, a role he continues to oversee today in addition to other responsibilities. With many teams reporting directly to Williams, he is seen as second-in-command behind CEO Tim Cook, who comes from a similar operations background.
Williams seldom makes public appearances and interviews, but he usually appears at the company’s events to unveil the latest Apple Watch models. Despite being a less-known Apple executive, the role of Williams is paramount to the company’s ability to ship hundreds of millions of units of new products annually in an orderly fashion, maintain solid relationships with global suppliers, and ensure Apple’s internal and external objectives are met on time.