Staff Data Engineer

AppFolio Inc • Goleta, CA

3d • $152,000 - $190,000 • Hybrid

About The Position

As a Data Engineer on AppFolio’s Business Data Platform (BDP) team, you will own the operational backbone of the data infrastructure and help lead the company’s Secure Data Initiative, maturing role-based access, tag-based masking, and governance across the platform. You will help ensure resilient, secure, and scalable systems that power analytics, AI, experimentation, and business decision-making. The role bridges platform engineering, data governance, and DevOps to support seamless data delivery and access with strong observability and compliance.

You will own observability and testing solutions, CI/CD architecture, service-account and permission management, data-pipeline SLOs, security controls, and infrastructure-as-code. You will also establish governance for AI-driven data consumption, partner with InfoSec and Compliance, maintain lineage and metadata documentation, automate routine operations, and collaborate with data and analytics teams to improve usability and self-service capabilities.

Requirements

• At least 8 years of experience in DataOps, Data Platform Engineering, DevOps, or related roles in modern cloud data environments.
• Proficiency with SQL, Python, Airflow, Mulesoft, Linux scripting, and dbt.
• Strong experience with cloud technology, especially AWS services including S3, EC2, and EKS, as well as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience with cloud data warehouse technology such as Snowflake, including data security and governance.
• Advanced proficiency with Airflow.
• Strong knowledge of CI/CD pipelines, GitOps workflows, codespaces, and infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform.
• Experience building self-service processes.
• Familiarity with data security standards and practices, including IAM, encryption, and audit logging.
• Familiarity with Snowflake RBAC, object privileges, masking policies, row-access policies, and secure UDFs/SPROCs for data engineering and ML/AI workloads.

Responsibilities

• Own the design, development, and maintenance of observability and testing solutions for the Business Data Platform to identify reliability, scalability, and data-quality issues and continuously improve the platform.
• Own CI/CD architecture for GitHub repositories, including automated checks, deployment pipelines, and orchestration, and maintain the platform as teams and use cases expand.
• Manage service accounts, roles, and permissions across Snowflake, dbt, and BI tools.
• Create and manage Data Pipeline SLOs.
• Create and enforce data access controls, masking policies, and encryption standards for data at rest and in transit.
• Define and own access governance for AI-driven data consumption, including access for Snowflake Coco, MCP server, and agent tools such as Chat-to-Data, applying least privilege, read-by-default access, and full audit logging.
• Partner with InfoSec and Compliance to implement and uphold auditability and privacy frameworks across the Business Data Platform.
• Maintain lineage and metadata documentation across key data domains.
• Implement and manage infrastructure-as-code for data platform components.
• Automate routine operations, including environment provisioning, credential rotation, and usage monitoring.
• Partner with data engineers, data science engineers, data scientists, and analysts to improve platform usability and self-service capabilities.
• Document and promote best practices for data access, job orchestration, and environment management.

Benefits

• Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits; specific benefits are not listed in the posting.
• The compensation package may include additional benefits or bonuses/commissions, depending on role and employment type.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed