Tech Hub Manager

About the role

Natural State is looking for a hands-on Tech Hub Manager in Nairobi (Westlands) to keep the Centre's physical and digital infrastructure running. The role covers servers, fibre connectivity, UPS and solar power, the on-premise service stack, the centre-wide network, IoT field devices and the Makers Lab and training facility. It suits someone who enjoys fieldwork and off-grid, resource-constrained settings.

Key responsibilities

• Run day-to-day hub infrastructure: two data servers, fibre, UPS and (once commissioned) solar power, with uptime monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Operate the on-premise service stack with Technical Delivery: host and container platform, storage volumes, user and access management, patching and basic hardening.
• Maintain backups on the 3-2-1 principle with an off-site copy and test restores on a fixed schedule; migrate NS Analytics data storage to the Hub's servers and keep it running.
• Keep health checks, capacity and alerting in working order and act on alerts.
• Own the network across the Centre: LAN and Wi-Fi, switching, VLANs, firewall rules, VPN, DNS and DHCP, and manage the internet links and their vendors.
• Keep network documentation current and manage the equipment inventory, procurement and servicing.
• Support the NS Analytics IoT platform: deploy, configure and maintain sensors, LoRaWAN gateways, cellular or satellite backhaul and solar/battery systems, and configure LoRaWAN, MQTT, CoAP and NB-IoT.
• Manage the Makers Lab and training programme, including scheduling, demo readiness, equipment inventory and operating procedures.

Required profile

• Experience managing physical technical infrastructure (servers, networking, power) hands-on and on-site.
• Comfortable troubleshooting server and network issues independently, including in low-connectivity or off-grid environments.
• Strong organisational skills for inventory, procurement and scheduling of a shared facility with multiple user groups.
• Enjoys working in a small, high-performance team and fieldwork.

Required skills

• Linux server administration: users, permissions, services, storage, filesystems, logs, scheduled jobs and backups.
• Network administration: LAN and Wi-Fi, VLANs, routing, firewall rules, VPN, DNS and DHCP on MikroTik, Ubiquiti or similar.
• Desired: backup and recovery practice, monitoring/alerting tools (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana).
• Desired: virtualisation or containers (Proxmox, VMware, Docker) and network-attached or object storage.
• Desired: solar power systems and IoT protocols (LoRaWAN, MQTT, CoAP, NB-IoT).
• Desired: maker space or lab experience, and training or demonstration coordination.