Embodiments described herein are generally directed to an edge-CaaS (eCaaS) framework for providing life-cycle management of containerized applications on the edge. According to an example, declarative intents are received indicative of a use case for which a cluster of a container orchestration platform is to be deployed within an edge site that is to be created based on infrastructure associated with a private network. A deployment template is created by performing intent translation on the declarative intents and based on a set of constraints. The deployment template identifies the container orchestration platform selected by the intent translation. The deployment template is then executed to deploy and configure the edge site, including provisioning and configuring the infrastructure, installing the container orchestration platform on the infrastructure, configuring the cluster within the container orchestration platform, and deploying a containerized application or portion thereof on the cluster.