Sr. Software Engineer - Resident Onboarding

AppFolio, Inc.; Santa Barbara (CA); Hybrid; USD 138,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio in Santa Barbara offers a Senior Software Engineer role focused on Resident Onboarding within a hybrid work setup. You’ll own end-to-end domain concerns, integrate with partners, and shape data pipelines to reduce move-in friction for residents.

You will mentor peers, drive architectural decisions, and pursue maintainable, scalable design while leveraging Ruby on Rails, Go, and React in a multi-service environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years building and operating production web services.
• Ownership of the architecture of a multi-service system.
• Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, or a comparable web stack.

Responsibilities

• Design and evolve service architecture for onboarding, including integrations and data pipelines.
• Lead design reviews and drive decisions with trade-off analysis.
• Develop scalable, robust solutions and ensure high-quality code with test coverage.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

Go

React

MySQL

AWS

Software architecture

System design

Jira

Job description

Sr. Software Engineer - Resident Onboarding

Location

Office Hub - Santa Barbara

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Hybrid

Department

Software Engineering

Compensation

AppFolio is more than a company. We’re a community of dreamers, big thinkers, problem solvers, active listeners, and multipliers. At every opportunity, we set the pace while delivering innovation built to carry real estate into the future. One in which every experience feels effortless, yet meaningful. Where customers are empowered to take on any opportunity. We show up as one team, connected by our values to be a force for good. Because together, we have the power to create extraordinary outcomes for our customers, our communities, and ourselves.

Moving is one of the most stressful events in a person's life. Between signing a lease and settling in, a new resident has to set up utilities, secure renters insurance, and coordinate with a property team that is juggling dozens of other move‑ins. Most of that work is still manual, fragmented across vendors, and easy to get wrong. We are hiring a Senior Software Engineer to join the Resident Onboarding team and become a technical domain expert in making that transition effortless.

This is a domain that gets complicated quickly. Utility providers vary by address and change without notice. Insurance requirements differ by property and jurisdiction. Partner systems are unreliable, data arrives incomplete, and every gap surfaces as a phone call to a property manager on move-in day. We combine automated research, partner integrations, and careful data modeling to close those gaps before the resident ever notices them. Our systems serve every new resident on AppFolio's Real Estate Performance Management platform.

This is an ideal opportunity for an engineer who thinks in systems, cares about the shape of a codebase years from now, and wants to set technical direction on a small, empowered team. You will be the engineer others look to when a design decision is hard.

Your impact

Build a deep understanding of the resident onboarding domain, enabling you and your team to truly own it end to end

Design and evolve the service architecture for onboarding, including partner integrations, data pipelines, and the interfaces other AppFolio teams build against

Lead design reviews, author technical proposals, and drive decisions to closure with clear trade-off analysis

Develop scalable, robust, and simple solutions to complex business problems, refactoring or starting fresh when it makes sense

Define observability and alerting standards for the team's services so that every alert is actionable and every incident has a clear owner

Mentor and guide other engineers through in-depth code review, pairing, and healthy technical debate

Work in a truly agile fashion to turn a large, unruly problem into thinly sliced deliverables and execute quickly against them

Prioritize quality. Thoughtful test coverage is a given and any escalations from external stakeholders like our onboarding or customer care teams are handled and resolved swiftly. Exceptions should be exceptional.

Qualifications

You know you are the right fit if you:

Have deep command of software architecture and design patterns, and can explain when a pattern applies and when it does not

Can reason through a system design in real time, defend it under scrutiny, and change position when presented with a better argument

Have integrated with third-party services and built resilient pipelines around unreliable external data

Write designs clearly enough that engineers outside your team can build against them

Care about the long-term maintainability of the codebase and advocate for refactoring and code cleanliness

Use modern tools, including AI-assisted development, while remaining the accountable author of every design decision you ship

Must have

5+ years of professional experience building and operating production web services

Demonstrated ownership of the architecture of a multi-service system, from design through production support

Production experience with Ruby on Rails, Go, or a comparable web stack, with willingness to work in both

Crisp communication skills: you know how to be heard and better-yet… listen

Track record of leading technical design across a team and influencing engineers who do not report to you

Nice to have

Experience with our stack: Ruby on Rails, Go, React, MySQL, AWS, service-oriented architecture

Experience integrating with utility, insurance, or other consumer-service providers

Experience with production observability tooling and on-call practices

Hatred for JIRA but willing to keep it to yourself

Location

Find out more about our locations by visiting our site .

All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of our hiring process.

The base salary that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is 138,400 - $190,300 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/commissions that you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.

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

About AppFolio

AppFolio is the technology leader powering the future of the real estate industry. Our innovative platform and trusted partnership enable our customers to connect communities, increase operational efficiency, and grow their business. For more information about AppFolio, visit appfolio.com .

Why AppFolio

Grow | We enable a culture of high performance, where delivering results is recognized by opportunities for growth and compelling total rewards. Our challenging and meaningful work drive the growth of our business, and ourselves.

Learn | We partner with you to realize your potential by investing in you from the start. We're cultivating a team of big thinkers through coaching and mentorship with our best-in-class leaders, and giving you the time and tools to develop your skills.

Impact | We are creating a world where living in, investing in, managing, and supporting communities feels magical and effortless, freeing people to thrive. We do this by innovating with purpose while cultivating a culture of impact. We learn as much from each other as we do our customers and our communities.

Connect | We excel at hybrid work by fostering an environment that feels flexible, personal and connected, no matter where we are. We create space to fuel innovation and collaboration, and we come together to celebrate, connect, and succeed.

At AppFolio, we value diversity in backgrounds and perspectives and depend on it to drive our innovative culture. That’s why we’re a proud Equal Opportunity Employer, and we believe that our products, our teams, and our business are stronger because of it. This means that no matter what race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, national origin, age, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, or veteran status, you’re always welcome at AppFolio.