Lead Data Scientist, Operations & Automation

At AppFolio, we paddle as one. We ride and make waves together, with a relentless focus on building great products for the way our customers work and live today – and tomorrow. AppFolio is a destination organization where careers are made and accelerated. Here, innovation is a team sport.

What we’re looking for

A Lead Data Scientist to manage a team of Data Scientists & analysts who support AppFolio’s highly regulated lines of business and operations-heavy teams. This person will lead their team to build machine learning models, dashboards, tooling, and automation to streamline operational efficiency, mitigate risk & fraud, and ensure compliance across AppFolio. 

Your impact 

• Act as a strategic partner to Business, Operations, and Product Leaders

• Build trusting relationships with other leaders and become a key consult in business decision-making

• Partner with the Director of Data Science & Analytics to build a strategy for scalable, automated data products, reporting, models, and tooling for other data members and stakeholders to leverage at scale

• Become a subject matter expert in the business and product details of GPS

• Deliver insights, analyses, and reports

• Facilitate the creation of reports, dashboards, and interactive tools that provide accurate, actionable data for business and product leaders to run their businesses

• Enable team with tooling and process to respond to high-impact fraud incidents and support rapid triage

• Manage and develop key data talent 

• Ensure optimized prioritization and processes for your team and provide clear, consistent guidance on prioritization

• Ensure subject mastery across the staff by investing in the team

• Support individual growth in both soft skills and technical expertise 

• Coach data analysts & scientists to deeply understand the business they support, enabling them to become trusted advisors

Qualifications

• Process management/leveraging technology: Ability to refine and navigate processes for maximum efficiency with high data integrity and a metrics-driven approach. Evaluates and recommends new tools/technology changes as necessary

• Honesty/Integrity: Does not cut corners ethically. Consistently operates with a high ethical and moral compass. Always does the right thing

• Cross-Functional Knowledge:  Navigates across verticals and functions and understands how each department contributes to our mission

• Coaching / Ability to develop people:  Coaches people in their current roles to improve performance and prepares them for future growth, proactively instilling perspective when necessary to ensure employee engagement

• Data Analytics skills – Adept at cleaning, transforming, and shaping data

• Communication / Executive Presence:  Has authentic communication skills including transparency and clarity in both formal and informal settings. Applies exceptional presentation skills to distill complex information into simple concepts & compelling stories

• Priority Setting/Prioritization: Can quickly sense what will help or hinder accomplishing a goal. Grounds prioritization in ROI of business outcomes

Must-Haves

• Strong computer science, mathematics, statistics, analytical and problem-solving skills

• 2+ years in a lead or management role with responsibility for a data team

• 1+ years of SaaS/Ecomm relevant experience

• Data Visualization: Tableau preferred (Looker, PowerBI)

• Data Transformation: 

• Advanced Python & Pandas

• SQL - Snowflake preferred (Redshift, BigQuery)

Nice to have
(These are supplemental - a passion and interest in learning these skills still make a great candidate!)

• Experience with DBT

• Experience building data products, data pipelines, tooling or automation

• Working knowledge of Salesforce

• Experience in one or any of the following:

• DTC digital products

• Insurance industry

• Payments industry

• Screening industry

• B2B SaaS

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary/hourly wage that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is: $128,000-$192,000

The actual base salary/hourly wage for this role will be determined by a variety of factors, including but not limited to: the candidate’s skills, education, experience, etc. 

Please note that base pay is one important aspect of a compelling Total Rewards package. The base pay range indicated here does not include any additional benefits or bonuses/commissions that you may be eligible for based on your role and/or employment type.
Regular full-time employees are eligible for benefits including but not limited to: 

• Paid Time Off (PTO) 

• Medical, dental, and vision benefits 

• Long-term and short-term disability insurance

• 401(k)

• Wellness benefits

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