Sr. Software Engineer - Platform Permissions

The Senior Software Engineer on the Permissions team will build an authorization platform that determines who can perform actions across AppFolio’s products. The role emphasizes scalable access control design, dependable permission-check performance, and migration of older permissions logic to a modern platform.

Role Overview

You will design and operate the authorization platform that provides roles, policies, and access checks for other engineering teams. This includes setting performance and availability goals for permission checks, building reusable access-control interfaces and tooling, and ensuring authorization changes ship safely through testing, controlled rollouts, and observability.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the authorization platform, including roles, policies, and access checks that other teams rely on
• Improve the speed and reliability of permission checks as usage grows, and establish performance and availability targets to sustain those outcomes
• Build interfaces, libraries, and tooling that help other engineering teams add access control to their features quickly and safely
• Lead migration of legacy, hard-to-maintain permissions logic to the modern authorization platform to reduce risk and complexity
• Contribute to raising the technical bar through thoughtful design reviews, pragmatic code review, and clear written proposals
• Mentor engineers and partner with product, security, and engineering teams to convert ambiguous access-control needs into clear systems
• Own end-to-end quality for authorization changes using automated testing, feature-flag rollouts, and observability

Requirements

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating production systems
• Fluency with AI coding agents, including experience with available agents, understanding common concepts, and willingness to learn and apply AI for development work
• Depth in one or more of the following: Ruby on Rails, Go, or React with TypeScript, or the ability and desire to become effective in them quickly
• Experience designing and owning non-trivial platform systems end-to-end
• Ability to work across the stack, including backend services and customer-facing interfaces, and adopt new languages and tools as needed
• Experience diagnosing and improving performance and reliability in systems handling high request volumes
• Strong drive to address root causes and reduce unnecessary complexity rather than applying temporary fixes
• Experience with authorization, authentication, or other security-sensitive systems is a plus
• Proactive and clear communication in writing and conversation, including explaining technical trade-offs to engineers and non-engineers
• Collaborative approach across the team and org-wide, providing and receiving feedback and supporting others’ success
• Prioritization of team delivery over individual productivity

Technologies

• Ruby on Rails
• Go
• React
• TypeScript

Location

San Francisco, CA (onsite)

Find out more about locations by visiting the company site. All late-stage candidates complete an in-person meeting with an AppFolian as part of the hiring process.

Compensation & Benefits

• The base salary range for this role is $138,400 - $190,300 per year.
• The actual base salary will be determined based on factors including skills, education, and experience.
• Base pay is one element of a Total Rewards package and may not include other benefits or bonuses/commissions based on role and employment type.
• Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits.