Infrastructure Engineer

Talentify; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space is hiring for a core infrastructure role in Washington, DC. You will own and operate parts of the infra stack, focusing on automation, cloud, and security tooling while managing on-call responsibilities.

The role emphasizes hands-on design, implementation, and cross-team collaboration to support space-ground communications systems. The candidate should bring 3–5 years of production infra experience, strong Linux/ networking knowledge, and fluency in Terraform, Kubernetes, AWS,

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of production infrastructure experience (SRE, DevOps, platform, network, or systems engineering).
• Working competence across Linux, networking fundamentals, AWS or equivalent cloud, infrastructure as code (Terraform), containers and Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling.
• Demonstrated ownership of a production system end-to-end: design, implementation, operation.
• On-call experience in a production environment with measurable reliability outcomes.
• Comfortable in code (Python, Go, or similar) for automation, tooling, and integration work.
• Strong technical writing — design docs, runbooks, post-mortems.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate one or more components of the Northwood infrastructure stack (CI/CD, app platform, cloud/IaC, networking, observability, security tooling).
• Build and maintain infrastructure as code. Default to Terraform, Helm, and GitOps.
• Carry on-call for the infra stack and resolve incidents independently.
• Partner with security engineering and compliance on controls implementation.
• Automate repetitive manual work and reduce toil; keep runbooks and docs current.
• Collaborate across infra, product engineering, and ground station operations on cross-cutting work.

Skills

Linux

Networking

AWS

Terraform

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Observability

Python/Go

On-call ownership

End-to-end ownership

Tools

Terraform

Helm

GitOps

Kubernetes

Vault

Okta

SIEM

VictoriaMetrics

Prometheus

Grafana

Vector

Loki

EKS

ArgoCD

Job description

About this job

About Northwood:

Northwood is a modern space infrastructure company bringing the benefits of space to the masses through advanced communications technology. We are building a global network of phased array ground stations that enable real-time, reliable communication for satellite missions such as national security, global connectivity, and disaster response. With a vertically integrated approach, Northwood designs, builds, and rapidly deploys scalable systems that power the next generation of space missions. If you like solving complex challenges and seeing your work deployed around the world with real impact, Northwood is the place to do it.

Role

Core individual contributor role on the Northwood Infrastructure team. Operates defined scope independently with a spike in at least one area of depth.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate one or more components of the Northwood infrastructure stack (CI/CD, app platform, cloud/IaC, networking, observability, security tooling). Take a defined scope and execute without ongoing oversight.
• Build and maintain infrastructure as code. Default to Terraform, Helm, and GitOps.
• Carry on-call for the infra stack. Handle the majority of incidents to resolution independently.
• Partner with security engineering and compliance on controls implementation in your areas - Vault policies, IAM boundaries, SIEM coverage, evidence collection.
• Treat toil as a design signal. When manual work repeats, automate it or fix the underlying system.
• Write and maintain runbooks, design docs, and component documentation. Keep them current with the system.
• Collaborate across infra, product engineering, and ground station operations on cross-cutting work.

Basic Qualifications

• 3-5 years of production infrastructure experience (SRE, DevOps, platform, network, or systems engineering).
• Working competence across: Linux, networking fundamentals, AWS or equivalent cloud, infrastructure as code (Terraform), containers and Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling. Not expert in all — competent enough to operate and contribute.
• Demonstrated ownership of a production system end-to-end: design, implementation, operation.
• On-call experience in a production environment with measurable reliability outcomes.
• Comfortable in code (Python, Go, or similar) for automation, tooling, and integration work.
• Strong technical writing — design docs, runbooks, post-mortems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong background in one or more of the following. We're hiring generalists with a spike, not specialists — depth in one area weighs heavily, but not at the cost of breadth across the basics.
• Networking — enterprise (FortiGate, switching), site/ground station, or core (TGW, WireGuard, BGP, IPsec)
• Security engineering — Vault, identity (Okta, IAM), SIEM operations, hardening
• Compliance partnership — implementing technical controls for CMMC, FedRAMP, NIST 800-171, ITAR
• Observability at scale — VictoriaMetrics or Prometheus, Grafana, alerting design, log pipelines (Vector, Loki)
• App platform — EKS at scale, on-prem k3s, ArgoCD and GitOps patterns
• CI/CD and developer experience — pipeline design, scanning and linting, release engineering
• On-prem and hardware-adjacent ops — bringing up systems in remote or austere environments, ground stations, edge sites

Additional Requirements

• This position requires successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment. While the clearance may not be immediately necessary upon hire, we encourage you to initiate the application process promptly upon accepting this offer. Your ability to secure the necessary clearance is essential for fulfilling key responsibilities of the role. Should you be unable to obtain it, Northwood Space reserves the right to modify or terminate your employment to align with optional needs.

Additional Information

If you need a reasonable accommodation as part of your application for employment or interviews with us, please let us know.

To conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations, including the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) you must be a U.S. citizen, lawful permanent resident of the U.S., protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3), or eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.

Northwood Space is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Northwood Space is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.