Technical Lead - Edge Platform

At VoCoVo, our retail communications solution runs on a large estate of Linux-based edge devices, our 'Controller', deployed at customers' premises. These devices are the beating heart of our in‑store experience, and keeping them reliable, secure and up to date at scale is a serious engineering challenge.

As Technical Lead you will report to the Head of Architecture and Platform, with day‑to‑day support from a Principal Platform Engineer. You'll lead a newly formed Edge Platform Team responsible for the OS, runtime environment and device management infrastructure that underpins our entire on‑premise estate. You will own the evolution of our Edge Platform, moving us from our current home‑grown Debian‑based OS towards a modern, production‑grade edge computing platform, including the evaluation and adoption of Kubernetes at the edge and immutable OS images.

We will work closely with internal development teams, Platform Operations, Internal Developer Experience and Cloud Applications teams. Your customers are our own engineering teams, and you will split your time approximately 60% on technical leadership and 40% on line management and team building.

Please note, to apply for this position you must be based in the UK and have the legal right to work in the UK. This role is largely remote but would require visits to our Oxfordshire or Cheltenham offices approximately once a month for team meet‑ups/key meetings.

What we’re looking for:

• Deep, hands‑on experience with Linux, including system configuration, init systems, networking and storage.
• Experience working with edge or embedded Linux, including building or maintaining distributions or custom OS images (Debian/Ubuntu‑based would be a strong plus, but not essential).
• Cloud‑native engineering experience, ideally with Go and Kubernetes (controller mechanisms, Kubebuilder), with familiarity in TypeScript being a bonus.
• Strong hands‑on experience with container orchestration using Kubernetes in production, ideally with lightweight or edge‑focused distributions (K3s, K0s, MicroK8s).
• Experience with image build tooling and immutable OS concepts, familiarity with tools such as Kairos, OSTree is highly desirable.
• Practical exposure to observability at scale, including metrics, logging, alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki) and hands‑on experience with OpenTelemetry.
• Experience operating or building infrastructure to manage, monitor and update large fleets of remote devices.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to clearly explain platform concepts to engineers, architects and non‑technical stakeholders.

Nice to have skills:

• Experience with OTA (over‑the‑air) update frameworks such as RAUC, Mender or SWUpdate.
• Familiarity with GitOps workflows and tools such as Flux or ArgoCD.
• Experience working with messaging protocols such as MQTT or Sparkplug IoT.
• Scripting and test automation experience (Bash, Goss, Serverspec).
• Experience working with cloud platforms, ideally Azure.
• Experience delivering solutions in retail or other complex, real‑world environments.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the team’s technical work on the VoCoVo Edge Platform, from OS image build pipelines through to runtime orchestration and device lifecycle management.
• Own the evaluation, adoption and rollout of Kubernetes at the edge across our device estate.
• Drive the evolution of our OS towards maintainable, immutable, production‑grade edge images.
• Design and implement secure, reliable OTA update mechanisms for OS and workload delivery at scale.
• Take ownership of the edge platform’s observability, reliability and security, including driving adoption of OpenTelemetry across the edge estate.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap, researching new approaches and producing demonstrations and proofs of concept.
• Provide day‑to‑day line management for a team of 3–4 engineers, supporting delivery and team wellbeing.
• Build and nurture a supportive, inclusive and enjoyable team environment where people can thrive.
• Coach and develop team members, supporting both VoCoVo’s goals and individual career growth.
• Collaborate with the Software Architect and other Team Leads to make and document well‑reasoned, evidence‑based architectural decisions.
• Proactively identify and mitigate technical risks, particularly those associated with operating at scale in real‑world retail environments.
• Plan ahead to support the needs of stream‑aligned teams building on the platform.
• Conduct code reviews and champion high engineering standards to ensure quality and consistency.
• Act as a technical sounding board and peer reviewer for other VoCoVo teams.
• Identify skill gaps within the team and address them through targeted training and recruitment.

Salary: Salary range: £80,000 - £85,000

Benefits: 25 Days Holiday +