Senior Edge Platform Engineer

Orange Barrel Media, LLC; Columbus (OH); On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Orange Barrel Media seeks a senior engineer to lead the edge platform powering our kiosk fleet. You will harden the Linux/Python stack, secure services, and scale the cloud IoT integration, while guiding one direct report and shaping the team’s growth.

This blended role emphasizes hands-on coding and mentorship, not pure management. You’ll work across edge devices, Ubuntu, AWS IoT Core, and observability tooling to keep our deployment healthy and secure.

Qualifications

• Strong, recent experience with Python at the systems level (async, systemd, MQTT, event loops).
• Snap packaging on Ubuntu LTS and Wayland-based kiosk stacks.
• AWS IoT Core in production, not just familiarity. OpenTelemetry instrumentation.
• Linux edge and device fundamentals with a practical understanding of the box.

Responsibilities

• Own the edge platform runtime and services; Python-based on Ubuntu, snaps, AWS IoT Core integration.
• Maintain and improve the display stack on real hardware in the field (Wayland kiosk sessions).
• Lead fleet operations: configuration rollouts, observability, and deployments.
• Deep AWS IoT integration (devices, shadows, jobs, routing, serverless triggers).
• Manage multiple concurrent workstreams while maintaining reliability and packaging modernization.
• Mentor and lead one direct report, including growth and feedback.
• Set the standard for edge/IoT code through code-review leadership.

Skills

Python

systemd

MQTT

Ubuntu LTS

Wayland

OpenTelemetry

IoT edge

Linux

Tools

Snap packaging

AWS IoT Core

OpenTelemetry instrumentation

Fleet configuration management

Serverless (AWS)

Job description

About this position

COMPANY OVERVIEW

Orange Barrel Media (OBM) creates and operates iconic urban media displays that advertisers ask for by name in top U.S. markets. Since our founding in 2004, OBM has pioneered a community-oriented model of outdoor media development and is nationally recognized by cities and real estate owners alike seeking to implement premier media programs that add to the character of urban places. In the advertising community, OBM is widely recognized as the owner of the highest impact and most memorable advertising locations in the cities where it operates.

The OBM team is also a leader in smart city infrastructure, launching the Interactive Kiosk Experience (IKE) platform in concert with cities across the U.S. through the company IKE Smart City. IKE is a best-in-class public engagement platform that helps cities communicate with the public, enliven the pedestrian experience, and tell the story of their city. The core pillars of the IKE platform are public benefit and social equity, values that we seek to maximize in every IKE market to achieve city objectives and exceed community expectations.

We are a place where people are inspired to achieve success, genuinely like each other, and have endless opportunities to grow.

We're hiring a senior engineer to lead the edge platform behind our kiosk fleet, the Linux/Python stack that runs on every device in the field, the cloud IoT services it talks to, and the tooling that keeps it healthy. The platform is built and in production. Your job is to harden it, secure it, and grow it, not to rewrite it.

This is a player-coach role. You'll spend most of your time writing and reviewing code, but you'll also directly manage one engineer, including 1:1s, goals, feedback, and career growth. If you want to be a pure IC or a pure manager, this isn't the right fit. If you've been doing both and want the title to match, keep reading.

Responsibilities

• The edge runtime: Python services on Ubuntu, packaged as snaps, talking to AWS IoT Core over MQTT, with async, systemd, and event-loop work
• The display stack: Wayland-based kiosk sessions on real hardware in the wild
• Fleet operations, including configuration management rollouts, OpenTelemetry instrumentation, and the observability work that lets us catch issues before sites do
• AWS IoT integration in depth, including devices, shadows, jobs, message routing, auth, and serverless triggers
• Multiple in-flight workstreams alongside steady reliability work, including packaging modernization and a fleet data-model refactor
• One direct report, including their growth, feedback loop, and career development
• Code review leadership, setting the bar for edge and IoT code from day one

Qualifications

Strong, recent experience across most of the following:

• Python at the systems level (async, systemd, MQTT, event loops)
• Snap packaging and modern Ubuntu LTS
• Wayland-based kiosk display stacks
• AWS IoT Core in production, not just familiarity with it
• A modern configuration management tool for fleet rollouts
• OpenTelemetry instrumentation
• Linux edge and device fundamentals, with a real understanding of what is happening on the box

You should be senior enough to review a peer’s edge code in your first week without hesitation. This is a niche domain with a small reviewer pool inside the team, and we need you to help expand it. [Add specific years-of-experience expectation, e.g. "8+ years in backend or platform engineering, with meaningful edge or IoT exposure."]

Preferred Qualifications (Not Required)

• Cellular edge routers and their SDKs
• Prometheus-family observability tooling
• Exposure to adjacent stack: Rails (light read-and-extend work on a couple of internal apps), Electron (adapter-level maintenance only), serverless functions, internal package distribution

What This Role Is Not

• Not a greenfield rebuild. We are hardening a working platform, not rewriting it
• Not cloud infrastructure-as-code work, which is owned elsewhere
• Not web or frontend product work
• Not pure management with no coding. This role is blended, and you will ship

How We Work

We bias toward incremental hardening, observability, and bug elimination over net-new abstractions. We prefer fewer, better-instrumented systems to more clever ones. We are happy operating in a niche, and we expect the manager of that niche to genuinely care about the engineer reporting to them, not just the roadmap.