The listings say the company is looking to for its iOS team who have experience developing navigation software. New hires will "seize this ground floor opportunity to help us build the world's best hosted platforms at massive scale," at the Santa Clara Valley location to help "deliver the next generation of Apple products."

Apple is looking for people with more than three years of experience "developing high quality, robust software systems." It's a plus if they have "deep knowledge of Computational Geometry or Graph Theory."

The default Maps app for iOS has been using Google for imaging since the first iPhone was released in 2007. Now that Google has emerged as a in the mobile operating system world, it stands to reason that Apple would look to minimize its reliance on the search giant's services.

The new listings aren't the first hint that Apple is moving into the mapping arena.

Apple ditched relying on location information from with the launch of iOS 3.2 on the iPad, in favor of using its own database. The company also in July and .