Sr. Software Engineer - Platform Permissions
About The Position
The Senior Software Engineer on AppFolio’s Permissions team will help build and operate the authorization platform that determines access across AppFolio products. The platform supports engineering teams throughout the company and helps protect customer data and ensure trustworthy workflows. The role involves designing systems that make access control fast, clear, and dependable at scale, and partnering with teammates and other teams to make secure implementation straightforward. The engineer will work across backend services and customer-facing interfaces, contribute to platform interfaces, libraries, and tooling, and help migrate legacy permissions logic to the modern platform. The position also contributes to design and code reviews, written proposals, mentoring, cross-functional collaboration, automated testing, controlled rollouts using feature flags, and observability. AppFolio welcomes candidates from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences.
Requirements
- At least 7 years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems.
- Fluency with AI coding agents, familiarity with common concepts, and willingness to learn and use AI for building.
- Depth in one or more of 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.
- Ability to diagnose and improve performance and reliability in systems serving high request volumes.
- Ability to work across the stack and pick up new languages and tools as needed.
- Ability to identify root causes and reduce unnecessary complexity rather than patch symptoms.
- Clear, proactive written and verbal communication, including explaining technical trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Ability to collaborate across teams, give and receive feedback, and prioritize team delivery.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with authorization, authentication, or other security-sensitive systems.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate the authorization platform, including roles, policies, and access checks used by other teams.
- Improve permission-check speed and reliability as usage grows, and set performance and availability goals.
- Build interfaces, libraries, and tooling that help engineering teams add access control to their features.
- Lead migration of older permissions logic to the modern authorization platform, reducing risk and complexity.
- Raise the technical bar through design reviews, code reviews, and clear written proposals.
- Mentor engineers, share context, and partner with product, security, and engineering teams to translate ambiguous access-control needs into clear systems.
- Own quality end-to-end through automated testing, controlled rollouts using feature flags, and observability.
- Work across backend services and customer-facing interfaces, diagnosing and improving performance and reliability in high-volume systems.
Benefits
- Eligible regular full-time employees receive benefits; specific benefits are not detailed in the posting.
- Compelling total rewards, with potential additional benefits or bonuses/commissions based on role and employment type.
- Opportunities for growth and coaching and mentorship.
- Time and tools to develop skills.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
