Staff Product Manager, Platform

Description

At AppFolio, we're building an AI-Native Performance Platform. This is our unified system that transforms data into real performance for our customers. Central to that mission is our Data Streaming Platform: the foundation that powers every insight, automation, and intelligent experience across our products.

We're looking for a Staff Product Manager to lead the teams responsible for our data pipelines, data query infrastructure, and data engineering capabilities. This is a highly technical and strategic role. You'll define how AppFolio collects, transforms, stores, and serves data to power products like Realm-X, AI Agents - Performers, Performance Insights, and Query APIs. You'll partner with platform engineering, architecture, and data science to deliver the scalable, trusted, and performant data foundation that makes our AI-native experiences possible.

What You'll Do

Define the Data Platform Vision : Build and evolve the strategy for AppFolio's next-generation data architecture, spanning ingestion pipelines, transformation frameworks, data quality, and query services.

Enable Intelligent Systems: Power capabilities across Realm-X, Flows, Performers, and Performance Insights by ensuring unified, high-quality, and real-time data access.

Empower Builders: Partner with internal development teams to deliver self-service data tooling, documentation, and APIs that reduce cognitive load and accelerate innovation.

Drive Data Quality and Governance: Establish consistent standards for lineage, observability, and accuracy to ensure confidence in every decision powered by AppFolio product data.

Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work closely with Engineering, Data Science, Security, and Product leaders to align priorities and deliver platform capabilities that scale.

Measure Impact: Define and track key outcomes such as data freshness, latency, and adoption of data APIs and frameworks, using these insights to continuously improve.

What We're Looking For

You've shipped platform products that other developers depend on. You understand the difference between building features for end-users and building capabilities that enable other builders. You know platform adoption is earned, not mandated.

You think in systems and second-order effects. When someone proposes a change, you immediately map dependencies, blast radius, and migration paths. You see how solving one problem might create three others - and you design to prevent that.

Engineers forget you're a PM. You can read schema definitions, debug API responses, write SQL queries, and understand why eventual consistency matters. You don't need to write production code, but you need to understand the technical constraints engineers work within.

You balance urgency with pragmatism. You know when to ship the 80% solution that unblocks teams today versus when to hold out for the right architecture. You use "strangler fig" patterns instead of big rewrites.

You make data-driven tradeoffs. You define metrics that matter (not vanity metrics), run experiments before big bets, and adjust course based on what adoption data tells you - not what you wish were true.

You communicate technical complexity to non-technical stakeholders. You translate latency budgets into business impact, schema versioning into customer value, and observability gaps into risk decisions executives can make.

Experience That Helps

We care more about what you've accomplished than credentials. If you've shipped products that developers love and can discuss architectural tradeoffs intelligently, we want to talk regardless of your formal education or exact years of experience. Here's some experiences of yours we'd love to hear about from you:

• You've built data platforms, developer tools, or infrastructure products that serve internal teams
• You've worked in modern data stacks (Kafka, Flink, dbt, Trino, GraphQL, data mesh architectures)
• You have experience designing APIs, data contracts, or schema management systems
• You've overseen implementing governance at scale without creating bureaucracy
• You've managed platform migrations while keeping production systems running
• You have a background in data engineering, distributed systems, or software development

Why This Role Matters

This is a multiplier role. You won't build features for end-users. You'll build the foundation that makes every other team at AppFolio faster. When you succeed, hundreds of developers ship better products. When you fail, the entire company moves slower.

You'll define how AppFolio builds for the next decade. The patterns you establish, the tooling you create, and the culture you foster around data will shape every AI agent, every API, and every customer experience we deliver.

If you've been looking for a role where technical depth meets strategic impact, where your decisions compound across an entire engineering organization, and where you can see the leverage in your work, well this is it.

Location

Find out more about our locations by visiting our site.

Compensation & Benefits

The compensation that we reasonable expect to pay for this role is: $152,000 - $190,000 [base pay / OTE]. The actual compensation for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to the candidate's skills, education, experience, and internal equity.

Please note that compensation is just one aspect of a comprehensive Total Rewards package. The compensation range listed here does not include additional benefits or any discretionary bonuses you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.

Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits - see here.

About AppFolio

AppFolio is the technology leader powering the future of the real estate industry. Our innovative platform and trusted partnership enable our customers to connect communities, increase operational efficiency, and grow their business. For more information about AppFolio, visit appfolio.com.


Why AppFolio

Grow We enable a culture of high performance, where delivering results is recognized by opportunities for growth and compelling total rewards. Our challenging and meaningful work drive the growth of our business, and ourselves.

Learn We partner with you to realize your potential by investing in you from the start. We're cultivating a team of big thinkers through coaching and mentorship with our best-in-class leaders, and giving you the time and tools to develop your skills.

Impact We are creating a world where living in, investing in, managing, and supporting communities feels magical and effortless, freeing people to thrive. We do this by innovating with purpose while cultivating a culture of impact. We learn as much from each other as we do our customers and our communities.

Connect We excel at hybrid work by fostering an environment that feels flexible, personal and connected, no matter where we are. We create space to fuel innovation and collaboration, and we come together to celebrate, connect, and succeed.

Paddle as One.

Learn more at appfolio.com/company/careers

Statement of Equal Opportunity

At AppFolio, we value diversity in backgrounds and perspectives and depend on it to drive our innovative culture. That's why we're a proud Equal Opportunity Employer, and we believe that our products, our teams, and our business are stronger because of it. This means that no matter what race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identification, national origin, age, marital status, ancestry, physical or mental disability, or veteran status, you're always welcome at AppFolio.