Sr. Software Engineer - Platform Permissions

AppFolio is a technology leader powering the future of the real estate industry through innovative platforms and trusted partnerships. The Senior Software Engineer will build and operate the authorization platform that manages access across AppFolio products, improve permission performance and reliability, and provide tools for engineering teams. The role also involves leading platform migrations, mentoring engineers, and ensuring secure, observable, and reliable releases.

Responsibilities:

• 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

Requirements:

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