Staff Machine Learning Engineer - Leasing (Santa Barbara)

DescriptionHi, We're AppFolioWe're innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We're more than just a software company — we're building the AI-native platform where the real estate industry comes to do business. We're transforming property management: how properties are leased, how residents find their homes, and how intelligence flows across an entire portfolio.Realm-X is AppFolio's AI-native platform powering this transformation. Within it, Realm-X Leasing Performer is an autonomous AI agent that handles the end-to-end leasing lifecycle — lead management, tour scheduling, follow-up, application processing, etc. — on behalf of property managers and leasing teams. It's one of AppFolio's most ambitious bets on autonomous AI, and it needs ML engineering worthy of that ambition.Who We Are Looking ForWe're hiring a Staff Machine Learning Engineer to own the ML strategy and execution that makes the Realm-X Leasing Performer production-grade, observable, and continuously improving. You'll sit at the intersection of applied ML, agent systems, and leasing domain expertise — working directly with Leasing Engineering, Voice & Agents, and Research ML to translate prototypes into systems our customers can depend on every day.This isn't a platform-only role. You'll be close enough to the product to shape how the Leasing Performer reasons, acts, and learns — and close enough to infrastructure to make sure it's reliable, cost-efficient, and safe at scale.Your ImpactOwn the ML Strategy for Leasing: Define and drive the machine learning roadmap across Leasing products — identifying where ML creates the most leverage, making the right model and architecture bets, and working closely with Product and Engineering leadership to align the team around a coherent technical vision that reflects real customer outcomes.Drive the Development & Architecture for Autonomous AI Agents: Be the ML lead for AppFolio's autonomous leasing agent — shaping how it communicates with prospective tenants and helps streamline leasing operations. You'll own the model quality, evaluation framework, and continuous improvement loop that makes the Performer better over time.Translate Research into Product: Partner with Voice & Agents and Research ML to evaluate new capabilities — fine-tuning approaches, retrieval strategies, agentic patterns — and make the call on what's ready to ship and what needs more hardening before it reaches customers.Drive Model Quality and Evaluation: Build the evaluation and experimentation infrastructure that lets the Leasing team ship ML changes with confidence — defining what better looks like for leasing-specific tasks and owning the metrics that reflect real customer outcomes.Set the ML Bar for Leasing Engineering: Establish the patterns, standards, and practices that the broader Leasing Engineering team follows when integrating ML — from prompt engineering and RAG to fine-tuning and model selection. Be the person the team comes to when the ML question is hard.Operate with Production Discipline: Ensure that ML systems powering the Leasing Performer meet the reliability bar that production SaaS demands — SLOs, observability, cost discipline, and a clear on-call posture. You don't have to build all of it, but you own the outcomes.QualificationsSystems thinker: You think in terms of platforms and long-term leverage, not just features. You understand how ML infrastructure decisions compound over time.Production builder: You've built and scaled ML infrastructure in production with meaningful business impact — and you treat it like any other production system.Domain curiosity: You take time to understand the business workflows your systems serve — in this case, leasing — and use that understanding to make better technical bets.Ambiguity: You operate effectively in high ambiguity, turning unclear infra problems into clear direction.Owner-operator: You take ownership with a founder mindset, act with urgency, and focus on outcomes.Collaboration: You are humble, collaborative, and low-ego — you elevate those around you and work fluidly across ML, product, and engineering.Reliability mindset: You treat ML infra like any other production system: SLOs, on-call, observability, postmortems.Sustainability: You value work-life balance as a foundation for sustained high performance.Must HaveML Development at scale: Has built and supported production ML systems at scale.Architectural Leadership: You have experience leading architectural discussions, defining system design, and guiding technical decision-making.Inference & Training: Has trained or fine-tuned language models end-to-end; comfortable with deep learning, evaluation, and inference.Training capability: Has trained or fine-tuned language models end-to-end; comfortable with deep learning, evaluation, and inference.RAG & agents: Hands-on experience with LangChain / LangGraph and modern RAG patterns over structured and unstructured data.AI safety & authorization: Hands-on experience operating AI guardrails, scoped tool permissions, and authorization layers for production AI systems — especially in agentic contexts.Nice to HaveExperience building ML systems for conversational AI, leasing, or CRM-adjacent workflows.GPU performance tuning (vLLM, TensorRT, Triton, or similar).Experience with ontology-driven systems or knowledge graphs supporting AI applications.Familiarity with real estate, property management, or leasing workflows.Contributions to open-source ML infrastructure or LLM tooling.LocationFind out more about our locations by visiting our site. Compensation & BenefitsThe compensation that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is: $200,000 - 250,000 base pay. 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.style=color:#ffffff;>#LI-KB1About AppFolioAppFolio 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 AppFolioGrow | 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/careersStatement of Equal OpportunityAt 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.