Streamlining of namespace package folder structure possible?

We're putting together a fairly extensive group of packages, with different groups contributing different parts. This software will be subject to a validation process, and the current decision is to use a namespace package -- call it ns -- containing all the validated software.

There are two core libraries here, ns.util and ns.ops, and then various contributors want to generate a large number of small packages. We're considering putting those individual collections in their own namespace. So, per our understanding of the structure, this is leading to a rather deep folder structure:

repo/
  ns_util/
    setup.cfg
    pyproject.toml
    ns/
      util/
        (lib sources)
  ns_ops/
    setup.cfg
    pyproject.toml
    ns/
      ops/
        (lib sources)
  ns_group1_pkg1/
    setup.cfg
    pyproject.toml
    ns/
      group1/
         pkg1/
           (pkg1 sources)
  # and so on for group1_pkg2, 3, 4, 5 ..
  #  and group2_pkg1, 2, 3 ...
  #  etc

I think our use case, with the many task-focused wheels, is not typical, and so this approach may just be what we need to do for this, but... Are there any opportunities here to reduce the depth of the tree? What about a common location for pyproject.toml which is currently trivial and identical for each wheel?