Staff Software Engineer — AI-Driven SaaS Architect

Appfolio; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 167,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Resident Concierge subsegment and drive the architecture of our next-generation SaaS platform. You will design and build high-scale, production-grade software while mentoring engineers and collaborating closely with Product, Design, and Machine Learning leaders.

You will help the team adopt AI tooling, guide technical trade-offs, and ensure long-term maintainability of the codebase in a high-growth, performance-focused environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience developing and scaling web-based applications in SaaS environments.
• Experience leading architectural discussions and defining system design.
• Proactively adopted AI tooling and demonstrated prompting/validation of AI outputs.

Responsibilities

• Drive the technical vision and strategy across the Resident Concierge subsegment.
• Lead design/implementation of complex distributed systems to support 10x traffic growth.
• Coach engineers and foster a high-trust, autonomous culture with ownership and learning.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and ML leaders to bridge AI capabilities with customer value.
• Own the full lifecycle of solutions from discovery to production.
• Research and apply new technologies to improve system quality and delivery speed.

Skills

Leadership

Architectural design

AI tooling adoption

Distributed systems

Mentoring engineers

SaaS experience

Ownership

Prompting AI

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

Golang

React

AWS

SOA

Job description

AppFolio is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Resident Concierge subsegment and drive the architecture of our next-generation SaaS platform. You will design and build high-scale, production-grade software while mentoring engineers and collaborating closely with Product, Design, and Machine Learning leaders.

You will help the team adopt AI tooling, guide technical trade-offs, and ensure long-term maintainability of the codebase in a high-growth, performance-focused environment.