>> The PCB was ordered from JLCPCB, where I opted to have most of the components pre-soldered.
very expensive, you are committed! :)
you should have gone Full Giertz and added a badd little robot arm that turn the pot.
esp32 are really nice: hundreds of code examples that do what you want without having to read too many pages. did you use ARDUINO IDE or idf.py SDK?