Building for Sustainable Systems — Joining Juno as CTO

As an engineer, I see the world through systems. Throughout my career, I’ve sought out burgeoning fields where applying technical rigor and a systems approach can bring new products to life, like solar panels, electric vehicles, and compostable packaging. After 30 years building software and hardware — from semiconductors to products to factories — I was looking for an opportunity where I could continue doing good for the planet while applying a new lens to engineering.

I’ve had the privilege of being at Solar City, Tesla and then Zume as the companies grew from startups to huge organizations building software and products across teams, disciplines, and locations. Creating manufacturing execution systems (MES) that drove transparency across these complex organizations allowed them to scale efficiently and bring their industry-redefining businesses to bear. The real estate industry is just as complex, and the role of engineering is more important than ever in bringing stakeholders from across the value chain together to create the alignment and cooperation needed to reimagine development.

Real estate development has a long legacy of inefficiency, in large part because it has lacked a system connecting design, supply chain, and construction. Traditionally, real estate projects are built as one-offs, so future projects aren’t able to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors. Juno’s approach of treating buildings like a product and creating an iterative development system means that buildings can be created more efficiently, sustainably, and cheaply over time. The fact that Juno wants to use technology to predict repeatable designs, cost, and timelines — a first in real estate development — was a very exciting opportunity that I knew I wanted to be a part of.

Juno has all the pieces to become a great tech company: sophisticated design, fabrication design management, and the ability to track projects onsite and remotely using data analytics. Instead of being at the whim of unvetted designs, Juno will make it possible to engineer designs that allow developers to reliably engage with supply chains, procurement, and drive down cost over time.

I’m looking forward to joining Juno as CTO and building a team of software engineers who will create a first-of-its-kind enterprise system, as well as a customer-facing platform, to make efficient, sustainable real estate development at scale a reality. If this sounds like you, join us!

Pablo Gonzalez is the CTO of Juno.