Technology Architecture
Founder's Story: John Hauber
3:59 · Engineering · Published
Executive summary
SeniorCRE’s founder outlines the mandate for a founding head of engineering: take a built platform for senior housing & care toward production readiness, with no capabilities currently running in production. The video describes an operator-controlled approach intended to sit above existing systems, then details the engineering foundation, layered access controls, and documented security program. The role is explicitly hands-on and owns architecture, security, infrastructure costs, and engineering hiring, while a product peer owns what gets built. Candidates also hear the compensation range and interview structure, including a paid work sample and an NDA walkthrough. This is a recruiting account of the platform’s current state and intended direction, not evidence of community deployment or operating results.
What this video answers
- What is the mandate for SeniorCRE’s founding head of engineering?
- How much of the platform is running in production today?
- What engineering foundation and access controls are described?
- How are product and engineering responsibilities divided?
- What security and compliance responsibilities come with the role?
- What compensation and interview process should candidates expect?
Key takeaways
- The founder reports 2,270 built capabilities, with none running in production.
- The intended platform approach puts operator control of data above existing systems.
- Access controls combine application-level tenant and role gates with row-level security as defense in depth.
- The engineering leader owns technical execution and team building; a product peer owns what gets built.
- The stated cash compensation range is $200,000–$325,000 plus founding-team equity, with a paid work sample in the interview process.
Where this sits in the architecture
- Evidence
- Disagreement
- Authority
- Governing Record
- Intelligence
- Execution
Model confidence never creates organizational authority. The governed operating record is designed and not yet implemented in any community — see the evidence record.
Full transcript
Transcribed from the narration.
Correction note: This recording describes engineering practice as "AI-native." That describes how the software is built, not what SeniorCRE is. SeniorCRE is operator-controlled operating infrastructure for senior housing & care.
Here's a sentence you will never hear in a recruiting video. Our platform has 2,270 built capabilities, and the number of them running in production is zero. I'm going to tell you why that's the most interesting engineering job in this industry and why I put that number on the job description instead of hiding it. I'm John Haber, founder of SeniorCRE.
We're building the operating platform for senior housing and care, clinical, financial, workforce, compliance, occupancy for the operators who run these buildings. This industry runs on Yardi, PointClickCare, MatrixCare. None of them talk to each other, and none of them answer to the operator. We sit above all of it, and the operator controls the data.
That's the whole thesis. It's simple to say and brutally hard to build, which is why I'm making this video. What exists today: a modern TypeScript monorepo, Fastify and tRPC on the back, React on the front, over Aurora PostgreSQL. Access control in two independent layers: application-level tenant and role gates as the primary control, row-level security underneath as fail-closed defense in depth.
All of AWS defined in Pulumi. HIPAA first from the first commit, not retrofitted. And development here is AI-native, Claude Code is standard practice, and the discipline around it is yours to shape. Seven stakeholder modules, 215 functional areas, every capability graded on a published tier system, which is how I can tell you honestly that the production-proven tier is empty.
Most companies would call that a caveat. I'm calling it the mandate. The person I'm hiring takes that inventory live with our first operators. You don't inherit someone's legacy mess and you don't start from a blank repo.
You get the rarest thing in engineering: a real platform, real stakes, and the go-live is yours. The seat is founding head of engineering. This top engineering job reports to me, and I'll be blunt about three things because you'd find them out anyway. One, it's player-coach, and I mean it.
Year one is majority hands-on. In the interview, I will ask when you last merged a non-trivial pull request. Two, you don't own product. A peer owns what gets built.
You own how, and you own it completely: the architecture, the security posture, the AWS bill, and the team charter which you hire against your own plan. There's already a banked candidate pool waiting for your review. Three dots. This is regulated healthcare data.
You'll carry real compliance responsibility, and you inherit a running security program in writing, not a vacuum. Compensation is not a mystery box. The cash band is 200 to 325 thousand plus a founding team equity grant, and we discuss all of it openly in the very first conversation. The interview is real work, not trivia: one deep technical conversation, a short paid work sample on your schedule, and finalists get an honest walkthrough of the platform and the backlog under NDA.
I'd rather you know exactly what you're signing up for than be sold. So here's the ask: if you've built on Postgres for real, you've owned AWS for real, and the idea of taking 2,200 capabilities from built to production-proven makes you lean in instead of flinch, email me at careers@seniorcre.com. Three to five sentences on the hardest multi-tenant or compliance-sensitive problem you've personally shipped through. That's it.
No recruiter chain. You'll be talking to me. Lean in and learn what we are all about. An opportunity like this comes around only a few times in a lifetime.
I appreciate your attention and time. Have a great day.