Staff Data Platform Engineer – Observability & Governance

Appfolio; Goleta (CA); On-site; USD 152,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio is seeking a senior Data Engineer to own the operational backbone of the Business Data Platform. You’ll lead observability, testing, and governance across Snowflake, dbt, and BI tools, while shaping CI/CD pipelines and SRE-like practices.

You’ll collaborate with InfoSec, Compliance, and analytics teams to ensure secure data delivery, auditing, and self-service capabilities across the organization.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in DataOps, Data Platform Engineering, DevOps, or related roles within modern cloud data environments.
• Proficiency with SQL, Python, Airflow, Linux scripting, dbt, and Mulesoft.
• Strong Experience with cloud technology, especially AWS, Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with Snowflake data warehouse, security, and governance.
• Advanced proficiency with Airflow.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform).
• Experience building self-serve data processes.
• Familiarity with data security practices (IAM, encryption, audit logging).
• Familiar with Snowflake RBAC, masking and row-access policies.

Responsibilities

• Own design, build, and maintenance of observability and testing for the Business Data Platform.
• Own CI/CD architecture for Github repos and deployment pipelines.
• Manage service accounts, roles, and permissions across Snowflake, dbt, and BI tools.
• Own creation of and performance of Data Pipeline SLOs.
• Create and enforce data access controls, masking, encryption standards.
• Define access governance for AI-driven data consumption with least-privilege access.
• Partner with InfoSec and Compliance on auditability and privacy.
• Maintain data lineage and metadata documentation.
• Implement IaC for data platform components.
• Drive automation of routine operations and environment provisioning.
• Collaborate with data engineers and scientists to improve usability and self-service.

Skills

8+ years DataOps/Data Platform/DevOps

Data engineering tools

AWS (S3, EC2, EKS)

Docker & Kubernetes

Snowflake governance & security

Airflow

CI/CD & GitOps

Self-service data platforms

IAM, encryption, audit logging

Snowflake RBAC & masking policies

Tools

Terraform

GitHub Actions

dbt

Snowflake

Job description

AppFolio is seeking a senior Data Engineer to own the operational backbone of the Business Data Platform. You’ll lead observability, testing, and governance across Snowflake, dbt, and BI tools, while shaping CI/CD pipelines and SRE-like practices.

You’ll collaborate with InfoSec, Compliance, and analytics teams to ensure secure data delivery, auditing, and self-service capabilities across the organization.