Fairstead is a purpose-driven real estate firm dedicated to building affordable communities across the country. Headquartered in New York, with offices in Colorado, Florida, and Washington DC, Fairstead owns and manages a portfolio of more than 30,000 apartments, including pipeline, across 28 states. As an integrated owner, operator, and innovator, Fairstead brings development, construction, and property management under one unified platform to deliver high-quality affordable housing that serves our residents at scale.
At Fairstead, we believe affordable housing should be thoughtfully designed, professionally managed, and responsibly operated. We seek to create and preserve housing that serves residents while delivering long-term value to communities, partners, and stakeholders.
Fairstead challenges industry norms through our tech-forward, entrepreneurial approach to affordable housing. In addition to core real estate capabilities, we operate innovative service lines designed to improve resident outcomes, strengthen communities, and drive operational efficiency. We embrace digital transformation, data-driven decision-making, and emerging technologies, including AI, to build scalable systems that support sustainable growth, grounded in a culture of entrepreneurship, innovation, partnership, dedication, and integrity.
The Senior Full Stack Engineer, IoT will design, build, and own the end-to-end technology stack powering Fairstead’s IoT platform — a proprietary system that connects sensors in our buildings to the data infrastructure that drives operational decisions across the portfolio. This role spans every layer of the stack: from device firmware and network configuration through message brokering and data normalization to storage, analytics, and user-facing applications.
This is a foundational hire. Fairstead is building its IoT capability in-house to gain full visibility and control over its technology stack. The Senior Full Stack Engineer will be the technical lead responsible for architecting this platform — designing a modern, open-standards-based infrastructure that Fairstead owns and operates. The work starts with a live pilot and scales to a portfolio of 27,000+ apartments across 28 states.
Beyond IoT, this role will help shape Fairstead’s broader digital strategy, including integration with property management systems and other enterprise platforms.
Responsibilities:
- Architect and build Fairstead’s proprietary IoT data pipeline from sensor to database — including LoRaWAN network server management, MQTT message brokering, event streaming, data normalization, and persistent storage
- Own the full stack: firmware configuration, network layer, ingestion layer, normalization layer, application layer, and data platform
- Design and implement a normalization framework that is device-agnostic and supports multiple IoT use cases (e.g., leak detection, air quality monitoring, submetering) without requiring schema changes
- Build and maintain application services, APIs, dashboards, and monitoring tools that surface IoT data to operations teams
- Evaluate build-vs-buy decisions across the stack, with a bias toward open protocols, portable data formats, and long-term flexibility
- Manage phased insourcing of platform capabilities — including data migration, device provisioning, and coordination with existing vendor partners during transition periods
- Establish end-to-end observability — monitoring device health, network performance, message delivery, and data integrity across every layer
- Integrate IoT systems with Fairstead’s property management stack and other enterprise platforms
- Identify and adopt AI tools and emerging technologies across the stack — from AI-assisted development workflows to intelligent alerting, anomaly detection, and automation within the data pipeline
Requirements:
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience spanning backend, frontend, and infrastructure
- Hands-on experience building IoT or connected-device systems — from the hardware/firmware layer through cloud infrastructure and user-facing applications
- Strong working knowledge of LoRaWAN, MQTT, and related IoT communication protocols
- Experience with message brokers and event streaming platforms (e.g., Kafka)
- Proficiency in TypeScript/JavaScript and Python; familiarity with additional systems languages (C/C++, Go, Rust) is a plus
- Experience with PostgreSQL or similar relational databases; familiarity with time-series data patterns
- Comfortable with containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud infrastructure (Azure preferred)
- Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Grafana, Prometheus, Loki)
- Familiarity with LoRaWAN network server platforms (e.g., ChirpStack) is strongly preferred
- Strong understanding of data pipeline architecture — ingestion, transformation, storage, and serving
- Demonstrated ability to work autonomously and make high-judgment technical decisions in ambiguous, early-stage environments
- Comfortable leveraging AI-assisted development tools and open to incorporating AI/ML capabilities into the platform over time
- Excellent communication skills — able to translate technical architecture into language that non-technical stakeholders understand
Preferred Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science
- Prior experience in smart building, proptech, or multifamily IoT companies (e.g., SmartRent, StratIS IoT, Quext, Rently, RealPage, Yardi, or similar)
- Experience designing systems with explicit auditability requirements — traceable data handoffs, structured logging, and clear ownership boundaries between layers
- Track record of scaling a system from pilot to production across multiple sites or buildings
Diversity in backgrounds and experiences is key to Fairstead’s success. Being an equal opportunity employer is a central tenet of our philosophy that shapes who we are and the communities we serve. Our goal is to ensure competitive total compensation that is commensurate with experience, location, and other market benchmarks.
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