Staff Software Engineer - Investor/Owner

Hi, We’re AppFolio.

We’re innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We’re more than just a software company; we’re a cloud-based powerhouse that creates products to make our customers’ lives easier. We are an AI-first engineering organization, revolutionizing how people do business. We want your ideas, enthusiasm, and passion to help us keep innovating at the speed of the modern market.

Who we are looking for:

We are looking for a pioneering technical leader to join a young, high-growth, cross-functional product development team, and to help drive the engineering growth and evolution of our Investor segment. As a Staff Software Engineer, you will help us design and build best-in-class app experiences, transforming sophisticated business needs into robust, production-grade SaaS infrastructure and pages. The ideal candidate will thrive in a highly collaborative environment, applying the latest in generative AI-assisted techniques to build an innovative product for our customers, has a passion for building leading-edge software and is driven to help build a successful SaaS product used by our large and growing audience of property managers and owners, and who wants to hold themselves to the highest standard of technical excellence while mentoring others in a high-stakes, high-scale environment.

Key Responsibilities:

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Drive the technical vision and strategy across the Owner subsegment, influencing the product roadmap and making key architectural decisions that align with business goals.

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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.

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Act as a force multiplier by coaching engineers and fostering a high-trust, autonomous culture where continuous learning and ownership are the norms.

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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.

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Operate in a highly autonomous team that owns the full lifecycle of solutions you build, from discovery to development to production

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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.

You know you’re the right fit if…

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You have 8+ years of experience developing and scaling web-based applications, preferably in a SaaS environment.

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You have 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.

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You have experience leading architectural discussions, defining system design, and guiding technical decision-making.

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You have proactively adopted AI tooling into your daily workflow. You don't just use these tools; you understand how to prompt, iterate, and validate AI-generated output to maintain the highest standards of excellence.

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You take a pragmatic approach to technology, adopting new tools where they add value, while mastering proven technologies.

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You care about long-term maintainability, advocate for clean architecture, and drive continuous refactoring and improvement.

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You balance intensity and sustainability—you’ll go the extra mile when needed but also model healthy work-life balance.

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You have an ability to solve complex problems without a roadmap

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You love to learn about and use new tech, but understand the value of continuing to leverage existing technology when it gets the job done.

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You care about the long-term maintainability of the codebase and advocate for refactoring and code cleanliness.

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You can identify and resolve code-smells through sensible refactoring.

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You care about the long-term maintainability of the codebase and will learn to advocate for refactoring and clean-ups where appropriate.

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You care about work-life balance and want your company to care about it, too; you'll put in the extra hour when needed but won't let it become a habit.

Nice To Have

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science or related technical discipline.

• Experience with technologies in our stack such as Ruby on Rails, Golang, React, AWS, or service-oriented architectures.

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is $167,200 - $209,000.

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.

Please note that base pay is one important aspect of a compelling Total Rewards package. The base pay range indicated here does not include any additional benefits or bonuses that you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.

Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits -

see here

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