Staff Software Engineer - Investor/Owner

About Us

We’re AppFolio, a cloud-based powerhouse creating AI-first software products to make our customers’ lives easier. As an AI-first engineering organization, we revolutionize how people do business. We value your ideas, enthusiasm, and passion to help us innovate at the speed of the modern market.

About the Role

We are looking for a pioneering technical leader to join a young, high-growth, cross-functional product development team and drive the engineering growth and evolution of our Investor segment. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will design and build best-in-class app experiences, transforming sophisticated business needs into robust, production-grade SaaS infrastructure and pages.

The ideal candidate thrives in a highly collaborative environment, applies generative AI-assisted techniques, and is passionate about building leading-edge software for a large and growing audience of property managers and owners. You will hold yourself to the highest standard of technical excellence while mentoring others in a high-stakes, high-scale environment.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical vision and strategy across the Owner subsegment, influencing the product roadmap and making key architectural decisions that align with business goals.
• Lead the design and implementation of complex, distributed systems that power our next-generation products, preparing our systems for a 10x increase in traffic and engagement.
• Act as a force multiplier by coaching engineers and fostering a high-trust, autonomous culture where continuous learning and ownership are the norms.
• Collaborate as a peer with Product, Design, and Machine Learning leaders to bridge the gap between "what’s possible" in AI and "what’s valuable" for our customers.
• Operate in a highly autonomous team that owns the full lifecycle of solutions you build, from discovery to development to production.
• Proactively research, share, and apply new technologies and patterns that improve system quality and accelerate delivery.
• Use test-driven development, code reviews, and continuous integration to deliver high-quality software and rapidly fix bugs as they come up.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience developing and scaling web-based applications, preferably in a SaaS environment.
• A track record of leading high-stakes projects from initial ambiguity to successful launch—aligning stakeholders, making tough technical trade-offs, and ensuring long-term system health.
• Experience leading architectural discussions, defining system design, and guiding technical decision-making.
• Proactively adopted AI tooling into your daily workflow, with an understanding of how to prompt, iterate, and validate AI-generated output to maintain high standards of excellence.
• A pragmatic approach to technology, adopting new tools where they add value while mastering proven technologies.
• A focus on long-term maintainability, advocating for clean architecture, and driving continuous refactoring and improvement.
• Ability to balance intensity and sustainability—going the extra mile when needed while modeling healthy work-life balance.
• Ability to solve complex problems without a roadmap.
• Passion for learning and using new tech, but understanding the value of leveraging existing technology when it gets the job done.
• Commitment to code cleanliness, identifying and resolving code-smells through sensible refactoring.

Nice to Have

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or a related technical discipline.
• Experience with technologies in our stack such as Ruby on Rails, Golang, React, AWS, or service-oriented architectures.

Pay

The base salary for this role is $167,200 - $209,000. The actual base salary will be determined by factors including the candidate’s skills, education, and experience. Additional benefits or bonuses may apply based on role and employment type.

Benefits

Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits. Our Total Rewards package includes:

• Opportunities for growth and compelling total rewards for high performance.
• Coaching, mentorship, and development tools to help you realize your potential.
• A culture of impact, where innovation and collaboration drive meaningful work.
• A flexible, personal, and connected hybrid work environment.