Sr. User Experience Designer

Hi, We’re AppFolio.

We’re innovators, changemakers, and collaborators. We’re more than just a software company — a cloud-based powerhouse that creates products to make our customers’ lives easier. We’re revolutionizing the way people do business, and we want your ideas, your enthusiasm, and your passion to help us keep on innovating.

We love where we work, and you can, too.

Conversations are at the heart of how our customers run their businesses. Property managers spend much of their time communicating with prospects, residents, and owners — answering questions, providing updates, and building trust. Our Sr. UX Designer for Voice AI will design intuitive, business-focused voice experiences that streamline these interactions, enabling automation where it adds efficiency and creating space for property managers to focus on the connections that matter most.

The ideal candidate will thrive in a highly collaborative environment, eager to apply Agile and Lean UX techniques while working alongside Software Engineers, QA Engineers, and Product Managers to build innovative AI-driven solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of voice AI experiences, from early exploration to polished conversational flows, ensuring interactions feel intuitive and aligned with business needs

• Help define and evolve conversational design guidelines and patterns within the broader design system
• Collaborate with Engineering and Product Management, together with the rest of the UX Team, to ensure a consistent and high-quality user experience across complex workflows being worked on individually by many small, fast-moving, cross-functional teams
• Develop conversation models, personas, and scripts that balance clarity, efficiency, and brand voice
• Participate in executing a comprehensive Design Strategy, and work towards meeting usability benchmarks and KPIs
• Collaborate with Product Management on roadmap and strategy, working as a tireless advocate for the end user and helping to balance those needs with those of the business
• Meet complex design challenges by participating alongside engineering, QA and product in LeanUX-inspired activities such as design studios, provisional personas and storymapping
• Ongoing, close collaboration with team members during the sprint including impromptu discussions and brainstorming activities as well as pairing with engineers on design
• Support designers and teams as needed with wireframes, flow diagrams, rapid prototypes and visual design to help communicate and validate design ideas
• Facilitate user research, in collaboration with the team, to test prototypes and conduct ongoing usability testing specific to conversational interfaces
• Evangelize a cohesive user experience via the consistent use of UI patterns
• Inspire teams beyond good usability to user delight exploring how tone, pacing, and micro-interactions in voice design can strengthen trust and engagement

• Participate in and help drive a comprehensive Design Strategy, setting usability benchmarks and success measures for conversational products.

Knowledge and Skills

• Strong portfolio of UX work with a focus on voice interfaces, conversational AI, or multimodal experiences

• Experience designing natural, human-centered conversations — including turn-taking, error recovery, and edge cases
• Understanding of voice UI usability principles (e.g., brevity, clarity, cognitive load)
• Basic knowledge of speech technologies (NLU/NLP, TTS, ASR) and how they shape the design process
• Understanding of cross-channel experiences (voice, text, web, and mobile) and how to create continuity across them
• Awareness of human-in-the-loop patterns — when to keep a person in the workflow, when to automate, and how to design smooth handoffs.
• Some background or exposure to large language models (LLMs) and emerging multimodal capabilities
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards for voice and multimodal interfaces
• Experience with a variety of UX deliverables (wireframes, user flows, mockups, prototypes, etc.), but with a keen sense of when to choose the right tool(s) to communicate the design
• Knowledge of Agile UX and Lean UX methodologies and experience working in a highly collaborative environment
• Demonstrated proficiency in low-fidelity design tools (such as FigJam) and advanced knowledge of design prototyping tools (such as Figma)
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills — able to bring clarity to ambiguous problems and rally stakeholders around the voice experience

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in user experience-focused roles, with at least 2 years in voice/conversational design or a closely related area

Compensation & Benefits

The base salary/hourly wage that we reasonably expect to pay for this role is: $125,600-$157,000

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 – see here.