Director, Software Engineering

AppFolio · Santa Barbara, CA · 1 wk ago

Engineering$216k–$270k/yrFull-time

Overview

We’re innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We’re revolutionizing how people do business in the real estate industry, and we’re seeking a Director of Engineering, Developer Productivity to join our team.

About the role

The Director of Engineering, Developer Productivity will manage and grow a world-class platform engineering organization for our award-winning products. You will drive the successful delivery of the internal developer platform (IDP) and developer tools while contributing to the overarching engineering strategy, architecture, and roadmap.

Responsibilities

Set the technical direction for the Internal Developer Platform, ensuring seamless "Golden Paths" for developers across distributed microservices.
Oversee the engineering of the Front-End Service Layer (FSL), ensuring a unified, high-performance UI framework and component library that bridges the gap between design and production.
Act as the primary technical counterpart for SRE and Security teams, translating reliability and compliance requirements into automated, invisible guardrails within the developer workflow.
Build automated Deployment and Delivery frameworks that enable high-confidence releases through canary deployments, blue-green shifts, and automated rollbacks.
Partner with InfoSec and SRE to ensure all delivery pipelines adhere to SOC 2, secure supply chain standards (SLSA), and automated vulnerability scanning.
Drive the strategy for integrating AI/ML models into the developer workflow to identify flaky tests, suggest code optimizations, and automate complex infrastructure-as-code (IaC) migrations that manual efforts miss.
Recruit, screen, and close high-caliber engineering talent, scaling three distinct current teams: Deployment/Delivery, Front-End Service Layer, and CI/Dev Tooling.
Lead, coach, and support a team of passionate platform engineers, creating an environment of creativity and speed while maintaining the discipline required for foundational infrastructure.
Instill a sense of Product Ownership over the developer experience, ensuring the team treats internal developers as Tier-1 customers.
Build trusting relationships with Product Management and SRE teams to align platform resources with company strategy, balancing immediate developer needs with long-term architectural investments.

Requirements

Experience with GetDX, JellyFish, or other developer metrics used to continuously improve the developer experience and productivity.
BS, MS, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical discipline.
8+ years of hands-on software development experience building enterprise SaaS or cloud-based platforms.
5+ years of demonstrated success hiring, managing, and retaining world-class engineering teams.
Proven track record leading platform or "Engineering Excellence" teams during a transition to hyper-growth.
Experience building proprietary CI/CD platforms (e.g., ArgoCD, or custom GitHub Actions orchestration) and internal developer portals (e.g., Backstage).
Deep understanding of build systems (e.g. Bazel) and test automation strategies for large-scale distributed systems.
Working knowledge of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and containerized workflows.
Strong grasp of frontend architecture, design system integration, and the challenges of scaling front-end service layers.
Demonstrated ability to design "self-healing" pipelines that maintain 99.999% platform availability for the engineering org.
Experience partnering with Data Science to operationalize AI-assisted engineering tools (LLM-based coding assistants, automated observability) within the internal toolchain.
Diverse technical background with in-depth experience across a range of architectures and technologies. Hands-on experience with all layers of the stack from infrastructure, persistence, backend, frontend, observability, etc for products at scale.
Recent experience using Agile methodologies and a deep understanding of release management workflows.
Exceptional interpersonal skills with a proven ability to build productive cross-departmental relationships (SRE, Security, Product).
Treat engineers as customers. Build a deep understanding of developer pain points through continuous listening (interviews, shadowing, telemetry) and translate that into a prioritized roadmap.
Define success in terms of measurable improvements to engineer flow, reliability, and time-to-value.
Be the voice of engineering. Advocate for platform/productivity investments with clear ROI, tying improvements to delivery speed, quality, and operational excellence.
Reduce toil relentlessly. Identify repetitive work and eliminate it via tooling, automation, paved roads, and self-service.

Qualifications

Experience with GetDX, JellyFish, or other developer metrics used to continuously improve the developer experience and productivity.
BS, MS, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical discipline.
8+ years of hands-on software development experience building enterprise SaaS or cloud-based platforms.
5+ years of demonstrated success hiring, managing, and retaining world-class engineering teams.
Proven track record leading platform or "Engineering Excellence" teams during a transition to hyper-growth.
Experience building proprietary CI/CD platforms (e.g., ArgoCD, or custom GitHub Actions orchestration) and internal developer portals (e.g., Backstage).
Deep understanding of build systems (e.g. Bazel) and test automation strategies for large-scale distributed systems.
Working knowledge of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and containerized workflows.
Strong grasp of frontend architecture, design system integration, and the challenges of scaling front-end service layers.
Demonstrated ability to design "self-healing" pipelines that maintain 99.999% platform availability for the engineering org.
Experience partnering with Data Science to operationalize AI-assisted engineering tools (LLM-based coding assistants, automated observability) within the internal toolchain.
Diverse technical background with in-depth experience across a range of architectures and technologies. Hands-on experience with all layers of the stack from infrastructure, persistence, backend, frontend, observability, etc for products at scale.
Recent experience using Agile methodologies and a deep understanding of release management workflows.
Exceptional interpersonal skills with a proven ability to build productive cross-departmental relationships (SRE, Security, Product).
Treat engineers as customers. Build a deep understanding of developer pain points through continuous listening (interviews, shadowing, telemetry) and translate that into a prioritized roadmap.
Define success in terms of measurable improvements to engineer flow, reliability, and time-to-value.
Be the voice of engineering. Advocate for platform/productivity investments with clear ROI, tying improvements to delivery speed, quality, and operational excellence.
Reduce toil relentlessly. Identify repetitive work and eliminate it via tooling, automation, paved roads, and self-service.

Skills

Experience with GetDX, JellyFish, or other developer metrics used to continuously improve the developer experience and productivity.
BS, MS, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical discipline.
8+ years of hands-on software development experience building enterprise SaaS or cloud-based platforms.
5+ years of demonstrated success hiring, managing, and retaining world-class engineering teams.
Proven track record leading platform or "Engineering Excellence" teams during a transition to hyper-growth.
Experience building proprietary CI/CD platforms (e.g., ArgoCD, or custom GitHub Actions orchestration) and internal developer portals (e.g., Backstage).
Deep understanding of build systems (e.g. Bazel) and test automation strategies for large-scale distributed systems.
Working knowledge of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and containerized workflows.
Strong grasp of frontend architecture, design system integration, and the challenges of scaling front-end service layers.
Demonstrated ability to design "self-healing" pipelines that maintain 99.999% platform availability for the engineering org.
Experience partnering with Data Science to operationalize AI-assisted engineering tools (LLM-based coding assistants, automated observability) within the internal toolchain.
Diverse technical background with in-depth experience across a range of architectures and technologies. Hands-on experience with all layers of the stack from infrastructure, persistence, backend, frontend, observability, etc for products at scale.
Recent experience using Agile methodologies and a deep understanding of release management workflows.
Exceptional interpersonal skills with a proven ability to build productive cross-departmental relationships (SRE, Security, Product).
Treat engineers as customers. Build a deep understanding of developer pain points through continuous listening (interviews, shadowing, telemetry) and translate that into a prioritized roadmap.
Define success in terms of measurable improvements to engineer flow, reliability, and time-to-value.
Be the voice of engineering. Advocate for platform/productivity investments with clear ROI, tying improvements to delivery speed, quality, and operational excellence.
Reduce toil relentlessly. Identify repetitive work and eliminate it via tooling, automation, paved roads, and self-service.

Benefits

Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - see here.

Pay

The base salary that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is $216,300-$270,000 plus equity and an annual incentive bonus. The actual base salary for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to: the candidate’s skills, education, experience, etc.

Schedule