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Tech Hub Manager
Job Location:
Monthly Salary:
Posted:
7 October 2026 (3 days ago)
Posted:
Application Deadline:
4 January 2027
Application Deadline:
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Vacancies:
Job Summary
Tech Hub Manager
Location: On-site Center for the Nature Economy Laikipia Kenya (commuting from Nanyuki or surrounding area).
Department: Research and Monitoring Technical Delivery Division
Reports to: Head of Technical Delivery/Senior Data Engineer
Terms: Full time (40 hrs per week)
About Natural State
Natural State is an international NGO based in northern Kenya dedicated to laying the groundwork for a resilient restoration economy. We design and develop the technologies and scientific methods required to support credible nature-based financial mechanisms. By reducing technical barriers and improving access to high-quality ecological information we are building monitoring tools and systems that offer cost-effective reliable measurement of biodiversity carbon water and social indicators.
About the role
The Tech Hub is Natural States centre for applied technology and innovation for the nature economy combining on-site data and technology infrastructure field capability the Makers Lab and practical learning. The Tech Hub is is built to operate off-grid with two owned data servers connected via fibre and solar power capacity currently being commissioned making it one of the few nature monitoring infrastructure facilities designed to run independently of grid power at this scale.
The Makers Lab is the Tech Hubs collaborative space for developing adapting and testing solutions to real-world nature economy challenges including hardware and software prototyping. Challenges can come from across Natural State as well as from practitioners communities partners researchers and other collaborators. The Lab brings together technical and scientific expertise from the Applied Science Division with participants coming through Leadership and Learning courses residencies and other programmes to develop and test practical solutions.
As Tech Hub Manager you will be the on-site steward of this facility. You will keep its physical and technical infrastructure running reliably support the migration of NS Analytics data storage onto the Hubs own servers and make the space work well for the people who use it day to day: the Makers Labs hardware and software prototyping and the training and demonstration programme run with the Leadership and Learning department. You will work closely with the Technical Delivery team on infrastructure and storage decisions with the Applied Science Division on Makers Lab needs and with Leadership and Learning on scheduling and running the Hubs training and demonstration activity.
Beyond the Hub itself you will provide on-the-ground support for the NS Analytics IoT service platform. You will deploy configure and maintain the sensors and field networks that feed data into the platform across client project sites and be the person who keeps that data flowing reliably from the field to the Hub.
This role is for you if...
- Youre hands-on and just as comfortable being responsible for physical infrastructure servers solar power fibre connectivity as for digital systems in a working field environment.
- You like being the person who keeps things running: you notice problems before they become outages and you fix them methodically.
- You enjoy fieldwork and get real satisfaction from getting a sensor network working reliably in difficult conditions.
- Youre comfortable being the go-to contact both for people using a shared space (Makers Lab training) and for the Technical Delivery team relying on the servers you manage.
- Youre energised by an off-grid resource-constrained setting rather than deterred by it.
- You enjoy working in a small high-performance team and pitching in where youre needed.
What youll work on
Hub infrastructure and on-premise services
- Day-to-day operation of the Hubs infrastructure: the two data servers fibre connectivity UPS and (once commissioned) solar power including uptime monitoring and troubleshooting.
- Running the on-premise service stack with Technical Delivery: host and container platform storage volumes user and access management patching and basic hardening.
- Backup and recovery: maintaining backups on the 3-2-1 principle with an off-site copy and testing restores on a fixed schedule so that we know recovery works before we need it.
- Migrating NS Analytics data storage onto the Hubs servers with Technical Delivery and keeping that storage service running as project volume grows.
- Monitoring and alerting: keeping health checks capacity and alerting in working order and acting on what they report.
Network across the centre
- Owning the network across the Center for the Nature Economy offices Tech Hub residential and guest areas: LAN and Wi-Fi coverage switching and VLAN segmentation firewall rules VPN access DNS and DHCP.
- Managing the internet links (fibre and any backup path) including the vendor relationships behind them.
- Keeping network documentation current: topology addressing credentials handling and change history.
Field devices and IoT
- Providing on-the-ground support for the NS Analytics IoT service platform as the field-side counterpart to Technical Delivery so that client deployments run reliably from sensor to platform.
- Deploying configuring and maintaining IoT sensors and monitoring devices: acoustic sensors camera traps soil moisture sensors weather stations and water monitoring equipment.
- Setting up and maintaining the field networks that connect these devices to the Hub including LoRaWAN gateways cellular or satellite backhaul and the solar and battery systems that keep remote nodes powered.
- Configuring IoT communication protocols such as LoRaWAN MQTT CoAP and NB-IoT including device provisioning firmware updates and edge processing where connectivity is limited.
- Keeping deployed systems operational: monitoring device health battery levels and data flow running scheduled maintenance visits and troubleshooting faults.
- Working with the Research and Monitoring team so that data arrives complete and on time and investigating together when it does not missing deployments failed uploads clock or metadata errors.
- Keeping clear records of every deployment (device locations configurations maintenance history) and training field teams and partners to carry out routine checks.
Makers Lab training and the shared facility
- Managing the physical and technical set-up of the Makers Lab keeping it stocked functional and safe and providing hands-on support to Leadership and Learning and the Applied Science Division in developing adapting and testing monitoring technologies hardware and other practical solutions in the Lab and in pilot deployments.
- Coordinating the Hubs training and demonstration programme with Leadership and Learning: scheduling host logistics and keeping the technology stack demo-ready for visiting practitioners and partners.
- Maintaining the equipment inventory and managing procurement servicing and vendor relationships for hardware power and connectivity.
- Writing and maintaining the Hubs operating procedures: server maintenance power management network changes and onboarding for Makers Lab and training users.
Requirements
- Must have: Experience managing physical technical infrastructure (servers networking power systems) in a hands-on on-site capacity.
- Must have: Comfortable troubleshooting server and network issues independently including in a low-connectivity or off-grid environment.
- Must have: Linux server administration: users and permissions system services storage and filesystems logs scheduled jobs and backups.
- Must have: Practical network administration LAN and Wi-Fi VLANs routing firewall rules VPN DNS and DHCP on equipment such as MikroTik Ubiquiti or similar.
- Must have: Strong organisational skills able to manage inventory procurement and scheduling for a shared facility with multiple user groups.
- Strongly desired: Backup and recovery practice and monitoring/alerting tools (for example Prometheus Grafana).
- Strongly desired: Virtualisation or containers (Proxmox WMware Docker or similar) and network-attached or object storage.
- Strongly desired: Experience with solar power systems or other off-grid power infrastructure.
- Strongly desired: Working knowledge of IoT communication protocols and networks (LoRaWAN MQTT CoAP NB-IoT) and of managing low-power devices in remote locations.
- Strongly desired: Experience supporting a maker space lab or prototyping environment (hardware and/or software).
- Strongly desired: Experience coordinating training demonstration or visitor programmes.
- Strongly desired: Familiarity with the field data collection and monitoring technology NS Analytics supports (ODK camera traps acoustic sensors) and experience with embedded hardware such as Raspberry Pi Arduino or ESP32.
Artificial Intelligence Guidance
We are an AI-forward organisation and you will be expected to use AI in this role and for parts of the job interview. However please do not use AI to write your cover letter or answer the screening questions.
Application Process
Click on this link to answer the screening questions and submit your written application (cover letter CV). If you are shortlisted you will be given a take-home assignment. If your take-home assignment is reviewed highly you will be scheduled for one to two rounds of online video interviews after which an offer may be made.
