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Principal Machine Learning Engineer

AppFolio Inc Goleta, CA

Goleta, CA

Today

$264k - $363k/yr Full time Agentic Ai Ai Agent Ai Agent Platform

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Job Description

AppFolio is hiring a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to lead mission-critical AI capabilities for Realm-X and support autonomous real estate performance management (RPM).

Responsibilities

Define the technical vision and architecture for AI systems across Realm-X in partnership with senior leadership
Design and deploy advanced AI agentic systems combining reasoning, planning, and execution
Build multi-agent orchestration across specialist agents such as maintenance, leasing, accounting, and collections
Create platform primitives and abstractions for context-aware, action-oriented automation beyond assistance
Raise end-to-end ML standards across data collection, model training, evaluation, deployment, and inference infrastructure
Architect and build scalable multi-modal, real-time AI applications with strong deployment quality
Drive AppFolio’s transition toward autonomous property management operations using existing LLMs while instrumenting proprietary data collection for targeted training, fine-tuning, and RL optimization of open-source LLMs and SLMs for RPM
Optimize RPM outcomes across performance, latency, and cost
Build data and feedback loops enabling Reinforcement Learning over agent action policies in a partially observable, high-stakes property management environment

Requirements

Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, or a related field (required)
10+ years building software systems with significant focus on ML/AI (or equivalent impact)
Published research and experience shipping production systems
Strong foundation in traditional machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI / LLMs (prompting, fine-tuning, RAG, agents, tool and skills use)
Direct hands-on experience with LLM post-training including SFT, RLHF, DPO, and/or RL at non-trivial scale
Expertise in data extraction, model training, evaluation, deployment, and production software integration
Expert in Python, PyTorch, NumPy, AWS, Docker, SQL, embeddings, and RAG
Experience with LangChain, LangGraph, and LLM observability tools (LangSmith)
Experience designing and operating production-grade ML systems at scale
Applied experience with ontology-driven systems, knowledge graphs, or semantic layers for AI business-domain modeling
Proficiency with AI coding tools and workflows (e.g., Copilot, ChatGPT, code generation tools)

Technologies

Python, PyTorch, NumPy
AWS, Docker
SQL, embeddings, RAG
LangChain, LangGraph, LangSmith
Copilot, ChatGPT
SFT, RLHF, DPO, LLMs, SLMs

Benefits

Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits
Compensation range: $264,000 - $363,000 base pay
Additional benefits or discretionary bonuses may be eligible based on role and/or employment type

Nice to Have

Deep RL expertise for sequential decision-making under partial observability
Experience designing evaluation and benchmarking systems for AI
Background in distributed systems and real-time architectures
Experience building platforms used by multiple engineering teams
Contributions to industry thought leadership (publications, talks, open source, etc.)

Location

Goleta, CA (onsite)
Find out more about locations by visiting AppFolio’s site
All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of the hiring process

Role Fit

Systems thinker focused on platforms and long-term leverage
Production builder with ML/AI scaling and meaningful business impact
Works effectively in high ambiguity and turns unclear problems into direction
Influence through leadership or cross-team technical initiatives
Originality in introducing new architectures or paradigms
Owner-operator mindset focused on outcomes and urgency
Fast execution with strong engineering judgment
Collaboration with humility and low ego
Sustainability values work-life balance for sustained performance
Vertical conviction interest in winning in real estate

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