Staff Software Engineer — AI-First SaaS Architect

Appfolio; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 167,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

AppFolio is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Resident Concierge subsegment. You will shape the technical vision, design distributed systems for high scale, and mentor a team in a fast-growing SaaS environment.

Ideal candidates have 8+ years building web apps, experience driving architecture, and a modern approach to AI-assisted tooling. This hybrid role supports collaboration across product, design, and ML to deliver customer value at scale.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience building and scaling web-based SaaS applications.
• Proven track record leading high-stakes projects from ambiguity to launch.
• Experience guiding architectural decisions and system design.
• Proactively adopted AI tooling to improve development workflows.
• Pragmatic, maintainable tech choices and clean architecture.
• Advocates refactoring and long-term code health.
• Values work-life balance while delivering high-impact results.
• Able to solve complex problems without a roadmap.
• Likes learning new tech while leveraging existing solutions.

Responsibilities

• Define technical vision and strategy for the Resident Concierge subsegment.
• Lead design and implementation of distributed systems handling increased traffic and scale.
• Coach engineers and foster an autonomous, high-trust culture.
• Collaborate with Product, Design, and ML leadership to align AI work with customer value.
• Own full lifecycle of solutions from discovery to production.
• Research and apply new technologies to improve quality and delivery speed.
• Apply test-driven development, code reviews, and CI to maintain quality.

Skills

Technical leadership

Systems design

Distributed systems

AI tooling adoption

Roadmap collaboration

Mentoring engineers

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s/Master’s/PhD in Computer Science

Tools

Golang

React

AWS

SOA/Microservices

Job description

AppFolio is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the Resident Concierge subsegment. You will shape the technical vision, design distributed systems for high scale, and mentor a team in a fast-growing SaaS environment.

Ideal candidates have 8+ years building web apps, experience driving architecture, and a modern approach to AI-assisted tooling. This hybrid role supports collaboration across product, design, and ML to deliver customer value at scale.