Tech Hub Manager

Role Overview

Natural State's Tech Hub is an off-grid applied technology and innovation facility built for the nature economy, and this role is the person who keeps it running. You'll be the on-site steward of the building's technical backbone — its own data servers, fibre links, UPS and solar power — while also being the field-side engineer who installs and maintains the sensors and radio networks that carry environmental data back to the Hub. The facility exists so that teams can prototype, test, teach and demonstrate nature-monitoring technology; your work is the reason those things are possible, since neither the Makers Lab, the training programme, nor NS Analytics' client IoT deployments function without dependable power, networks and data flows.

Key Responsibilities

• Keep the Hub's core infrastructure alive: run and monitor the two on-site data servers, fibre connectivity, UPS and (once commissioned) solar power, watching uptime and troubleshooting faults before they turn into outages.
• Operate the on-premise service stack alongside Technical Delivery: host and container platforms, storage volumes, user and access management, patching and baseline hardening.
• Protect the data: maintain backups on the 3-2-1 principle with an off-site copy, test restores on a fixed schedule, and migrate NS Analytics' data storage onto the Hub's own servers while keeping that storage healthy as project volumes grow.
• Watch and respond: keep health checks, capacity reporting and alerting accurate and act on what they surface.
• Own the network across the Centre for the Nature Economy: LAN and Wi-Fi coverage across offices, the Hub, residential and guest areas, plus switching and VLAN segmentation, firewall rules, VPN access, DNS and DHCP. You'll also manage the internet links (fibre and any backup path), including the vendors behind them, and keep topology, addressing, credential handling and change history documented.
• Deploy and maintain field technology: acoustic sensors, camera traps, soil moisture probes, weather stations and water monitoring equipment — including device provisioning, firmware updates, and edge processing where connectivity is thin.
• Build the connections and power that keep remote sites online: LoRaWAN gateways, cellular or satellite backhaul, and solar/battery systems for remote nodes, configured across protocols such as LoRaWAN, MQTT, CoAP and NB-IoT. This includes scheduled maintenance visits, fault-finding, and watching device health, battery levels and data flow.
• Make the data land: work with the Research and Monitoring team when data arrives late or incomplete — chasing missing deployments, failed uploads, and clock or metadata errors — keep clear records of every deployment, and train field teams and partners to run routine checks.
• Run the Makers Lab and the Hub's training activity: keep the Lab stocked, functional and safe, support the Applied Science Division and Leadership and Learning in developing and testing monitoring hardware and software, and coordinate the demonstration and training calendar — scheduling, host logistics and keeping the tech stack demo-ready for visiting practitioners and partners.
• Keep the facility supplied and documented: manage the equipment inventory and procurement, servicing and vendor relationships for hardware, power and connectivity, and write the operating procedures that cover server maintenance, power management, network changes and onboarding for Lab and training users.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Essential — physical infrastructure: hands-on, on-site experience managing servers, networking and power systems, not just remote administration.
• Essential — independent troubleshooting: able to diagnose server and network problems on your own, including in low-connectivity or off-grid conditions.
• Essential — Linux server administration: users and permissions, system services, storage and filesystems, logs, scheduled jobs and backups.
• Essential — practical network administration: LAN and Wi-Fi, VLANs, routing, firewall rules, VPN, DNS and DHCP, on equipment such as MikroTik or Ubiquiti.
• Essential — organisation: comfortable managing inventory, procurement and scheduling for a shared facility with several different user groups.
• Strongly desired — resilience and visibility: backup and recovery practice, plus monitoring and alerting tooling such as Prometheus or Grafana.
• Strongly desired — platforms and storage: virtualisation or containers (Proxmox, VMware, Docker or similar) and network-attached or object storage.
• Strongly desired — off-grid power: experience with solar power systems or comparable remote power infrastructure.
• Strongly desired — IoT: working knowledge of LoRaWAN, MQTT, CoAP and NB-IoT, and of managing low-power devices in remote locations.
• Strongly desired — lab and programme experience: supporting a maker space, lab or prototyping environment (hardware and/or software), and coordinating training, demonstration or visitor programmes.
• Strongly desired — field hardware: familiarity with field data collection technology such as ODK, camera traps and acoustic sensors, and with embedded platforms like Raspberry Pi, Arduino or ESP32.

What We Offer / Why Join

• A rare kind of facility: the Tech Hub runs independently of grid power at a scale few nature-monitoring operations can match, with two owned data servers on fibre and solar capacity coming online — so you'll be building and testing solutions in genuinely self-sufficient conditions.
• A role that spans the physical and the digital: if you want to work across servers, solar, fibre, sensors and software rather than specialising in one, this is that job.
• Real fieldwork: getting a sensor network to perform reliably in difficult terrain is a core part of the work, not an occasional extra.
• A small, high-performance team: you'll be the go-to person for the Technical Delivery team relying on your servers, and for the makers, researchers and learners using the shared space.
• Cross-disciplinary collaboration: you'll work closely with Technical Delivery on infrastructure and storage, the Applied Science Division on Makers Lab needs, and Leadership and Learning on the Hub's training and demonstration programme.
• Built for people who like the constraints: the setting is off-grid and resource-conscious — rewarding if that energises you rather than puts you off, and a place where pitching in wherever needed is part of the culture.