Over Horizon — Vetted HR Platform for Mariners
- Role: Freelance Full-Stack Developer
- Engagement: Sep 2024 → Present
- MVP Timeline: ~12 weeks to launch
🚀 MVP🌐 WordPress🐘 PHP🧩 Startup☁️ AWS
📖 Project Overview
Over Horizon solves a visibility and trust problem: experienced mariners struggle to discover Canadian job openings unless they already know which companies to approach, and employers have limited confidence in applicant legitimacy. The platform centralizes vetted job postings and provides a verified candidate pool, creating a faster and safer hiring experience for both sides.
90 Days
🚀 from concept to revenue
50+
💳 Paying users in Q1
83%
📈 Weekly active retention
❌ Problem
- No central, industry-specific job board for mariners seeking Canadian roles.
- Employers lacked confidence in applicant authenticity and credentials.
- Fragmented processes for posting jobs, managing applicants, and collecting payments.
💡 Solution
A centralized, vetted HR platform with role-specific onboarding, secure resume handling, and built-in monetization. The product supports three main user groups—mariners, employers, and operations/admin—each with the tools they need to move from discovery to hire.
⚙️ Core Product Capabilities
- Vetted Talent Pool: Resume verification workflow by the Over Horizon team to ensure employer trust.
- Centralized Job Postings: Employers publish openings and review verified candidates in one place.
- Secure Resume Delivery: Token-based links prevent unauthorized access or sharing of candidate data.
- Monetization: Subscriptions and pay-per-post options tailored to each user group.
- Billing Automation: Recurring payments via WooCommerce Subscriptions and custom plugins.
🙋 My Contributions
- Led discovery, scoping, and delivery from concept to AWS production in ~12 weeks.
- Implemented the multi-tier monetization model (subscriptions + pay-per-post) across 3 user groups.
- Built the secure, token-based resume delivery mechanism and verification workflow.
- Developed a custom WordPress theme and plugins; integrated WooCommerce Subscriptions for recurring billing.
- Set up CI/CD and cloud infrastructure; ran weekly stakeholder demos to accelerate iteration.
🏗️ Architecture & Stack
- Frontend: JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery
- Backend & CMS: PHP, WordPress, custom plugins
- Payments: WooCommerce + Subscriptions
- Data: MySQL, REST APIs
- Infra & CI/CD: AWS, Docker, GitHub Actions
- Security: Role-based access control, tokenized resume delivery
🤔 Why this approach?
- Speed to market: MVP shipped quickly with a stack that balances velocity and maintainability.
- Built-in monetization: WooCommerce Subscriptions provides reliable recurring billing.
- Operational trust: Verification workflows + secure delivery address employer concerns.
- Scalability: Containerized services and CI/CD enable safe, frequent releases.
🏆 Outcomes
- Revenue-generating MVP delivered in 3 months.
- 50+ paying users within the first quarter after launch.
- Facilitated investor demo meetings for the founding team.
- Faster iteration cycles through weekly stakeholder demos and feedback loops.
📓 Process Notes & Lessons
- Discovery to scope: early workshops clarified user roles (mariner, employer, admin) and the verification requirement.
- Risk reduction: tokenized resume links + verification workflows addressed core trust issues from day one.
- Monetization design: offering both subscriptions and pay-per-post lowered adoption friction for different user types.
- Delivery rhythm: weekly demos reduced turnaround time for priority features by ~30%.
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