Lead ML Engineer - Autonomous AI for Real Estate

Appfolio; Denver (CO); Hybrid; USD 264,000 - 363,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work environment

Job summary

AppFolio is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to lead the next generation of AI systems within Realm-X, our autonomous RPM platform for real estate performance management. You will own mission-critical AI capabilities and shape long-term technical strategy across teams and leadership.

You'll operate at the intersection of traditional ML, deep learning, and generative AI, building systems that go beyond AI assistance into execution, automation, and optimization.

Qualifications

• Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, ML, or related field.
• 10+ years of experience building software systems with ML/AI focus.
• Combined academic and industry track record with published research and production systems.
• Deep ML expertise in traditional ML, DL, and Generative AI/LLMs (prompting, fine-tuning, RAG, agents).
• LLM post-training experience (SFT, RLHF, DPO, RL) at scale.
• Full ML lifecycle understanding: data extraction, training, evaluation, deployment, production integration.
• Core stack expertise: Python, PyTorch, NumPy, AWS, Docker, SQL, embeddings, and RAG.
• Agent tooling experience with LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith.
• Production ML at scale experience.
• Ontology/knowledge graphs experience for AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Define the technical vision and architecture forRealm-X AI systems with leadership.
• Design and deploy advanced AI Agentic systems with multi-agent orchestration.
• Establish platform primitives and abstractions for context-aware, automated AI.
• Architect scalable, multi-modal, real-time AI applications and ensure high deployment standards.
• Drive autonomous property management initiatives, instrument data collection, and RL optimization.

Skills

Systems thinker

Production builder

Ambiguity

Influence

Originality

Owner-operator

Pace

Collaboration

Sustainability

Vertical conviction

Education

Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science / ML or related field

10+ years software/ML experience

Tools

Python

PyTorch

NumPy

AWS

Docker

SQL

Embeddings

RAG

LangChain

LangGraph

LangSmith

Job description

AppFolio is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to lead the next generation of AI systems within Realm-X, our autonomous RPM platform for real estate performance management. You will own mission-critical AI capabilities and shape long-term technical strategy across teams and leadership.

You'll operate at the intersection of traditional ML, deep learning, and generative AI, building systems that go beyond AI assistance into execution, automation, and optimization.