Manager, Applied Data Science
About The Position
The Manager, Applied Data Science leads the Data Scientists on AppFolio’s Platform Data Science team, building AI and machine-learning products for business use. These include a signal engine that converts product usage, account health, and customer interactions into persona-specific Next Best Actions for go-to-market teams; Chat-to-Data, a natural-language analytics product; and forecasting automations used by Finance and Customer Success. The role is a player-coach: initially building alongside the team to learn the business, data, and individual coaching needs, then shifting toward directing the team’s work. It bridges applied machine learning and SaaS go-to-market strategy. The manager owns signal modeling and scoring, shared data science services, forecasting automations, agentic data access, and standards for the Cerberus model fleet. The role is accountable for the quality and risk of models and deliverables, coordinates priorities and delivery with Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Finance, sets the direction for applied AI/ML, and manages and develops a team of Data Scientists.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in a STEM field.
- At least 8 years building and deploying predictive models in production for business stakeholders, including sales, marketing, or customer success teams.
- At least 2 years leading data scientists, either as a people manager or as a technical lead who set direction, reviewed work, and coached team members.
- Strong programming background; Python and SQL are required. Must have taken models from raw tables to production and expect to continue building alongside the team.
- Experience developing, deploying, monitoring, and retraining classification and propensity models end to end.
- Fundamentals of experimental design, including holdouts, control groups, statistical power, and measuring incremental lift rather than model accuracy alone.
- Experience building and evaluating LLM-based products in production, such as agents or natural-language analytics, including accuracy and coverage checks that gate use.
- Experience with a cloud data warehouse such as Snowflake, dbt, an orchestration framework such as Airflow, version control, and CRM data such as Salesforce.
- Record of setting priorities with senior leadership, turning ambiguous questions into repeatable models, communicating actionable recommendations, and declining requests unsupported by data.
Nice To Haves
- Experience designing next-best-action or recommendation systems that arbitrate across several models.
Responsibilities
- Own signal modeling and scoring logic across AppFolio products and co-create the Next Best Action layer, providing ranked recommendations per persona for accounts.
- Own shared data science services, forecasting automations, and agentic data access; partner with business teams to support adoption and explainability.
- Establish coding standards and review gates for the Cerberus model fleet, including deployment, monitoring, retraining, and publication of outputs to governed Data Marts with required access controls and audit logging.
- Review every team pull request and deliverable; own the quality and risk of models, analyses, recommendations, and automations.
- Coordinate delivery with Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Finance leaders; set priorities, represent Data Science & Analytics in cross-functional working groups, and run the team’s operating rhythm to deliver urgent requests and roadmap work.
- Set the direction for applied AI and machine learning in Data Science & Analytics with department leadership.
- Manage and grow a team of Data Scientists through one-on-ones, coaching, performance reviews, hiring, and individual growth paths.
- Build alongside the team during the first year while learning the business and data, then shift from doing the work toward directing it.
Benefits
- Eligible regular full-time employees receive benefits; details are referenced via a link in the posting.
- The company describes total rewards and opportunities for growth, coaching, mentorship, and skill development.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Manager
