AppFolio · 1 month ago
Staff Machine Learning Engineer
United States
Full-time
Remote
Lead/Staff
$200K/yr - $250K/yrAppFolio is a technology leader transforming the real estate industry through an AI-native platform. They are seeking a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to design and operate their ML infrastructure, optimize AI costs, and collaborate with engineers to productionize AI systems.
Big DataElectronicsInformation TechnologyReal EstateSaaSSoftwareCloud ComputingAnalyticsComputerProperty ManagementPropTechWeb Hosting
Responsibilities
Design and operate AppFolio's ML infrastructure on AWS — ECS, SageMaker, GPU fleets, model serving, autoscaling, and cost controls
Optimize cost across all AI applications — provider routing, caching, batch vs. real-time, model size selection, and inference economics
Maintain reliable, multi-provider LLM access across Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic with sensible fallbacks and abstractions
Build the training and fine-tuning stack for Small Language Models, including data pipelines, GPU orchestration, and evaluation
Partner with Voice & Agents and Research ML engineers to harden their prototypes into production systems with SLOs, on-call rotations, and observability
Operate AppFolio's AI safety and authorization layer — guardrails on AWS, scoped tool permissions, and human-in-the-loop gates for autonomous agent actions
Qualification
Required
Systems thinker: You think in terms of platforms and long-term leverage, not just features
Production builder: You've built and scaled ML infrastructure in production with meaningful business impact
Ambiguity: You operate effectively in high ambiguity, turning unclear infra problems into clear direction
Owner-operator: You take ownership with a founder/owner-operator mindset, act with urgency, and focus on outcomes
Pace: You have a strong desire to move fast and deliver impact, while maintaining sound engineering judgment
Collaboration: You are humble, collaborative, and low-ego, and you elevate those around you
Sustainability: You value work-life balance as a foundation for sustained high performance
Reliability mindset: You treat ML infra like any other production system — SLOs, on-call, observability, postmortems
ML infra at scale: Has built and operated production ML infrastructure on AWS — ECS, SageMaker, GPUs, autoscaling, and cost controls
Inference platforms: Production experience with model serving for both LLMs and custom models; understands quantization, batching, and routing
Provider breadth: Direct experience integrating with Google (Vertex / Gemini), OpenAI, and Anthropic APIs in production
Training capability: Has trained or fine-tuned language models end-to-end; comfortable with deep learning, evaluation, and inference
Cloud-native engineering: Strong Python, Docker, dependency management, and CI/CD for AI workloads
RAG & agents: Working knowledge of LangChain / LangGraph and modern RAG patterns over structured and unstructured data
Cost optimization: Demonstrated experience reducing unit cost of AI workloads without regressing quality or latency
AI safety & authorization: Hands-on experience operating AI guardrails, scoped tool permissions, and authorization layers for production AI systems
Preferred
Experience training Small Language Models for production use
GPU performance tuning (vLLM, TensorRT, Triton, or similar)
Prior Staff-level role at a company with a significant AI infra footprint
Experience with ontology-driven systems or knowledge graphs supporting AI applications
Contributions to open-source ML infrastructure or LLM tooling
Benefits
Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - [see here](https://www.appfolio.com/company/careers#Benefits).
Discretionary bonuses you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.
A comprehensive Total Rewards package.
Grow | We enable a culture of high performance, where delivering results is recognized by opportunities for growth and compelling total rewards.
Learn | We partner with you to realize your potential by investing in you from the start.
Coaching and mentorship with our best-in-class leaders, and giving you the time and tools to develop your skills.
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.
Company
AppFolio
AppFolio is a cloud business management solutions provider for the real estate industry.
Founded in 2006
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
AppFolio has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
88%
Represents job field similar to this job
Engineering and Development
Product Management
Management and Executive
Customer Service and Support
Accounting and Finance
Creatives and Design
Trends of Total Sponsorships
*2026 (13)
2025 (18)
2024 (24)
2023 (22)
2022 (34)
2021 (51)
2020 (35)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
$30MKey Investors
Investment Group of Santa BarbaraCisco,HeadlineHeadline
2015-06-26IPO
2013-11-01Series Unknown
2009-08-18Series C· $8M
Leadership Team
Shane Trigg
President and CEO
Tim Eaton
Chief Financial Officer
Recent News
2026-06-18
Morningstar.com
2026-06-16
2026-06-10
Company data provided by crunchbase