Sr. Software Engineer - Platform Permissions

AppFolio is more than a company. We're a community of dreamers, big thinkers, problem solvers, active listeners, and multipliers. At every opportunity, we set the pace while delivering innovation built to carry real estate into the future. One in which every experience feels effortless, yet meaningful. Where customers are empowered to take on any opportunity. We show up as one team, connected by our values to be a force for good. Because together, we have the power to create extraordinary outcomes for our customers, our communities, and ourselves.

The Senior Software Engineer on the Permissions team will help build the authorization platform that decides who can do what in all AppFolio products — the foundation that keeps every customer's data safe and every workflow trustworthy. Your work supports every engineering team at AppFolio and, through them, the property managers, owners, investors, and residents who rely on our platform every day. You'll design systems that make access control fast, clear, and dependable at scale, and partner closely with teammates and other teams to make the secure path the easy path. We welcome engineers from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences; if you're excited about this work, we'd love to hear from you.

Your impact

• Design, build, and operate the authorization platform — the roles, policies, and access checks that other teams build on top of

• Improve the speed and reliability of permission checks so they stay fast as usage grows, and set the performance and availability goals that keep them there

• Build the interfaces, libraries, and tooling that other engineering teams use to easily add access control to their own features, so they can move quickly and safely

• Lead the migration of older, hard-to-maintain permissions logic onto the modern authorization platform, reducing risk and complexity along the way

• Raise the technical bar through thoughtful design reviews, pragmatic code review, and clear written proposals that help the team make good decisions together

• Mentor engineers, share context generously, and partner with product, security, and engineering teams to turn ambiguous access-control needs into simple, well-understood systems

• Own quality end-to-end - automated testing, controlled rollouts (with feature flags), and observability - so authorization changes ship safely without disrupting the teams that depend on them

Qualifications

• Work comfortably across the stack - backend services and customer-facing interfaces - and pick up new languages and tools as needed

• Diagnose and improve performance and reliability in systems that serve high request volumes

• Drive to root causes and cut unnecessary complexity rather than patch symptoms

• Experience with authorization, authentication, or other security-sensitive systems is a plus

• Communicate proactively and clearly in writing and conversation, explaining technical trade-offs to both engineers and non-engineers

• Collaborate generously across your team and with engineering teams org-wide — giving and receiving feedback well and helping others do their best work

• Prioritize team delivery over individual productivity

Must have

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems

• Fluency with AI coding agents - experience with any of the available agents, understanding of common concepts, and willingness to learn and utilize AI for building

• Depth in some of the languages we use — Ruby on Rails, Go, or React with TypeScript — or the ability and desire to become effective in them quickly

• A track record of designing and owning non-trivial Platform systems end-to-end 

Location

All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of our hiring process.

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is $138,400 - $190,300

The actual base salary for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate’s skills, education, experience, etc. 

Please note that base pay is one important aspect of a compelling Total Rewards package. The base pay range indicated here does not include any additional benefits or bonuses/commissions that you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type. Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - see here.

#LI-SS