Geovation Technology & Incubator Lead
Geovation Technology & Incubator Lead
Full Time | £70,000.00 - £84,647.00 including London Weighting (dependent on experience)
London based with 3 days a week minimum in the Farringdon Hub
About the role
Help shape the future of geospatial innovation and the next generation of location powered products.
Geovation is OS's externally facing innovation, research & development function - working with startups, founders and partners to explore new applications of location data and help ideas become reality. Our Farringdon hub is a vibrant, collaborative environment where entrepreneurs, technologists and geospatial specialists come together to solve meaningful, real-world problems.
As we continue to grow our ecosystem, this role sits at its innovation focused core: guiding research led experimentation, accelerating the development of innovative products, and translating insights into outcomes that drive OS's future success.
Why this role matters
Geovation exists to expand OS's impact beyond the traditional geospatial world. We nurture early-stage startups, build partnerships and uncover emerging technologies and markets where location data creates unique value.
This role owns Geovation's Technology & Innovation capabilities and programme - which we call our Incubator. It's where embryonic ideas are explored, emerging markets are discovered, and critical insights are developed that will shape OS's future direction. The incubator is all about finding and developing ideas, innovation and new applications of location data - that we can learn from -so we make better products and more impact. We do this in a way that is open to the wider world - not hidden away in a secret lab. In fact, these ideas aren't our ideas at all - they're the ideas of entrepreneurs. We're here to help those entrepreneurs try to realise their visions by helping them build new products that solve big problems that really matter.
In this role you'll be equivalent to our Chief Technology Officer (CTO) - but with interest and skills in Product-led thinking. The role blends technical leadership, innovation strategy, product and programme management. It drives the discovery and development of new applications of location data while supporting startups with practical, experiment-driven development programmes.
What you'll be responsible for:
Leading Geovation's Incubator Team
Lead a team of technical and non technical employees
Own and deliver Geovation's Incubator programme, ensuring it generates insight, market development outcomes and value for startups and partners.
Identify which startups to work with and shape bespoke support packages tailored to their needs and growth stage.
Design and oversee hypothesis-led proof-of-concept experiments that deliver tangible learning for OS and value creating, meaningful IP for startups.
Programme development & delivery
Develop and lead agile, design-led and sprint-based development programmes within the Incubator, with clear outputs and learning objectives, using best-practice agile approaches.
Contribute to consultancy revenue generation (approx. £50k-£100k per year).
Technical leadership
Provide credible thought leadership at the intersection of geospatial data, emerging technology and new markets.
Communicate complex technical and market concepts clearly to a wide range of audiences.
Technical management
Strengthen Geovation's research, experimentation and product-development capabilities.
Ensure Geovation's technical tools, skills and processes are maintained, modern and effective.
Support team members in developing their technical capabilities.
What you'll bring:
Essential
A strong technical background with at least 5-10 years of experience of geospatial and/or software development using a range of tools and languages.
Proven leadership ability, with 3- 5 years' experience leading high performing technical teams
At least 2-3 years of experience of working in or supporting early-stage startups, leading to clear understanding of founders' needs and credibility with new and seasoned start up CTOs
Proven ability to lead and deliver innovation, research or technical development programmes and run practical experiments that generate insight and validate hypotheses.
Up to date with emerging trends in technology and geospatial data, with the ability to identify what is relevant.
Recognised as a thought leader with strong communication and influencing skills, comfortable interacting with both technical and non-technical audiences and communicate them clearly as a thought leader.
Product-led and design-thinking mindset; able to flex between product, technical and strategic approaches.
Desirable
Experience mentoring, coaching or advising startups, founders or product teams.
Experience working within technology-led startup accelerator, incubator or innovation-focused environment.
Exposure to geospatial technologies, data or location-powered applications.
Experience in securing and delivering revenue generating technical consultancy work.
Background in programme management or delivering externally funded programmes.
Closing date: Friday 12th June 2026 at 23:59pm
*Please note that we may close the vacancy earlier than this date if we receive suitable applications.