Staff ML Engineer: Autonomous Leasing AI at Scale

Appfolio; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 200,000 - 275,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to own the ML strategy for Realm-X Leasing Performer, guiding end-to-end ML lifecycle from model selection to production observability. You will collaborate with Leasing Engineering, Voice & Agents, and Research ML to ship reliable, scalable AI capabilities that customers depend on daily.

You will shape how the leasing agent reasons, acts, and learns, and ensure production discipline with SLOs, costs, and safety at scale.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience developing and scaling web-based applications, preferably SaaS.
• Architectural leadership in system design and decision-making.
• Trained or fine-tuned language models end-to-end; comfortable with deep learning and inference.
• Hands-on experience with LangChain / LangGraph and RAG patterns.
• Experience operating AI guardrails and authorization layers for production systems.
• Knowledge of leasing workflows or CRM-adjacent processes is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the ML strategy for Leasing, shaping roadmap and architecture bets.
• Lead development and architecture for autonomous AI agents powering leasing workflows.
• Translate research into production features with cross-functional partners.
• Build evaluation infrastructure and metrics reflecting customer outcomes.
• Set patterns and practices for ML integration across the Leasing Engineering team.
• Maintain production discipline: SLOs, observability, cost control, on-call readiness.

Skills

SaaS experience

Systems thinking

Production ML infra

Domain knowledge leasing

Ambiguity tolerance

Owner-operator mindset

Collaboration

Reliability engineering

Sustainability mindset

AI safety & guardrails

Education

Bachelor's, Master’s, or Ph.D. in CS or related field

Experience with ML systems for conversational AI or leasing

Tools

LangChain / LangGraph

RAG patterns

ML infra tooling

Job description

AppFolio is hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to own the ML strategy for Realm-X Leasing Performer, guiding end-to-end ML lifecycle from model selection to production observability. You will collaborate with Leasing Engineering, Voice & Agents, and Research ML to ship reliable, scalable AI capabilities that customers depend on daily.

You will shape how the leasing agent reasons, acts, and learns, and ensure production discipline with SLOs, costs, and safety at scale.