Cova Recruitment

I recruit the software engineers who build the layer between connected devices and the data systems behind them.

IoT platforms, telemetry pipelines, streaming and real-time data infrastructure. Permanent hires only. The niche is global, so I work wherever it does.

Everything I work on sits between the device and the application, and the same engineers move between these areas.

I place these engineers
  • IoT platform and connectivity engineers
  • Streaming and real-time data engineers
  • Edge software and edge AI engineers
  • Industrial IoT and OT engineers
  • Engineering leaders and architects
into these teams
  • IoT platform companies
  • Real-time data infrastructure companies
  • Edge and on-device software companies
  • Industrial and energy software companies
  • In-house platform teams

MQTT, Kafka, Flink, Pulsar, AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, ROS2, OPC-UA. The software layer between the device and the application.

If you are hiring

These roles are hard for a reason. The people who have actually built this layer are few, and nearly all of them are already in jobs.

This is the only market I work in, so I spend my time knowing who those people are rather than starting to look once you brief me. That means a short list instead of a long one, and every name on it can defend the work.

If you build in this space

I keep a view across the companies working in this layer. Who is genuinely doing the work rather than claiming it, where the interesting problems actually sit, and what the market is paying for them.

You do not need to be looking for anything. If that is ever a useful view to have, I am easy to reach.

Who you are dealing with

Cova is one person. Me, Oliver Laycock.

That is a deliberate choice, not a stage on the way to building an agency. You deal with me from the first conversation through to the offer. The person who takes the brief is the person doing the searching and making the calls, so nothing reaches you second hand.

The trade is capacity. I take on a small number of searches at a time, and I will tell you plainly when I am not the right person for one.

Permanent placements only. No contract, no volume, no fifty roles on a job board.

Get in touch

Email or LinkedIn, whichever is easier. You do not need a live role or a live search to start a conversation.