Senior ML Architect — Autonomous AI Agents

AppFolio, Inc.; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 264,000 - 363,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio, Inc. seeks a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to define and lead the next generation of AI systems within Realm-X. You will own mission-critical AI capabilities, shape long-term technical strategy, and act as a technical visionary across teams and leadership.

You will operate at the intersection of traditional ML, deep learning, and generative AI, building systems for execution, automation, and optimization in a real estate RPM domain.

Qualifications

• Must have Master's or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience building software systems with significant focus on ML/AI.
• Combined academic and industry track record: published research and shipped production systems.
• Deep ML expertise: traditional ML, deep learning, and generative AI/LLMs.
• LLM post-training experience: SFT, RLHF, DPO, RL at scale.
• Full ML lifecycle: data extraction, model training, evaluation, deployment, inference.
• Core stack: Python, PyTorch, AWS, Docker, SQL, embeddings, RAG.
• Agent tooling: LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith.
• Production ML at scale; ontology & knowledge graphs; AI-native engineering.
• Nice to Have: Reinforcement Learning depth and distributed systems experience.

Responsibilities

• Architect and lead the technical vision for Realm-X AI systems in partnership with senior leadership.
• Scale intelligent AI agents with reasoning, planning, and multi-agent orchestration across specialist agents.
• Improve platform primitives for context-aware, action-oriented AI and end-to-end ML systems.
• Architect scalable, multi-modal, real-time AI applications with high-quality deployment standards.
• Drive autonomous property management through ML/AI and RL optimization of data and models.
• Build data/feedback loops for RL over agent policies in complex environments.

Skills

Systems thinker

Production builder

Ambiguity

Influence

Originality

Owner-operator

Pace

Collaboration

Sustainability

Vertical focus (real estate)

AI/ML system design

Education

Master's degree in CS/ML

Ph.D. in CS/ML

Tools

Python

PyTorch

NumPy

AWS

Docker

SQL

Embeddings

RAG

LangChain

LangGraph

LangSmith

Job description

AppFolio, Inc. seeks a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to define and lead the next generation of AI systems within Realm-X. You will own mission-critical AI capabilities, shape long-term technical strategy, and act as a technical visionary across teams and leadership.

You will operate at the intersection of traditional ML, deep learning, and generative AI, building systems for execution, automation, and optimization in a real estate RPM domain.