WASHINGTON The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday that it had charged a former Apple Inc engineer with attempting to steal the firm's technology related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars.

The engineer, whom Justice Department officials named as Weibao Wang, 35, in 2017 accepted a U.S.-based job with a Chinese company working to develop self-driving cars before resigning from Apple.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, David Shepardson and Rami Ayyub)