For those who have been following Apple for a long time, Johny Srouji is no stranger. For the rest of the world yes, but after the appointment of John Ternus as CEO of Applethis Israeli engineer has become the second most powerful person in the company. The question is obvious: who is Johny Srouji?
Who is Srouji and why does he matter?. Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1964 to a middle-class Christian Arab family, Srouji studied computer science at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) and graduated Summa Cum Laude in both his engineering and master’s degrees. He worked at Intel and IBM before Apple hired him in 2008 with a very clear assignment: to design the company’s first chips. He did much more than that.
The revolution made chip. That first chip designed by Srouji was the Apple A4, which debuted in 2010 in the original iPad and the iPhone 4. From there, Srouji forged one of the most prestigious hardware careers in the recent history of the technology industry. The A7 of 2013 was the first SoC in using 64-bit architecture, and then there would come the revolution of the Apple M1 with which the company definitively got rid of dependence on Intel in its Macs.
But his work goes beyond. His official title until now was senior vice president of hardware technologies, but it did not reflect the real scope of his work. Srouji not only led the chip design. Also that of batteries, cameras, storage controllers, sensors, displays, cellular modems and other critical components of the entire family of Apple devices. Almost everything that makes these products work the way they do is largely due to the work of Srouji and his team. With the new position, his responsibility expands and he will now control the entire cycle: not only the hardware itself, but also the physical design. It’s a colossal challenge, but if anyone seems prepared to take it on, it’s Srouji.
He was about to leave. In December 2025 Bloombeg reported that Srouji had informed Tim Cook that he was seriously considering leave Apple in the near future. Two days later, Srouji himself published a message to his team denying the newsbut the damage was done. For Apple to lose Srouji would have been a disaster, and it is very likely that this new position is in part Apple’s response to that alarm signal. Textbook talent retention, but raised to maximum power.
New position, new structure. In it internal communication that Srouji has sent to team employees, the engineer detailed how he will organize the division into five areas:
- Hardware engineering: led by Tom Marieb, an Intel veteran who joined Apple in 2019.
- Siilicio: it will be directed by Sri Santhanam, a manager with a long career at Apple
- Advanced Technologies: Supervised by Zongjian Chen
- Platform architecture: led by Tim Millet
- Program management: will be managed by Donny Nordhues
In that message, Srouji acknowledges that this “represents a significant change” but believes it will work thanks to the entire team. It seems that you are very clear about how you want to work with your team.
A fusion with a lot of historical sense. The reunification of hardware engineering and the hardware technologies division under the same leader is not entirely new. It is the structure that Apple had for years under the direction of Bob Mansfield, former head of hardware. until 2013 and? then he took charge of the failed Project TitanApple’s car. That’s when those two areas were divided, something that allowed both Ternus and Srouji to progress in their domains, but also caused some structural tensions between teams that had to collaborate. Bringing them back together is a clear commitment to strengthening that collaboration.
The great cover-up of Ternus’s appointment. It is normal that the vast majority of headlines go to Ternus, who will decide the future of the company from now on, but Apple is above all a hardware company. That Srouji now becomes his leader makes this engineer a person with enormous power within the company. The change is promising in terms of promoting that facet of the product that both he and Ternus dominate, and without a doubt interesting times await us at Apple.
Image | Apple
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