Infrastructure Engineer

Northwood; Washington, Torrance (District of Columbia, CA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Northwood Space is seeking a core infrastructure contributor to own and operate components of the infra stack, including CI/CD, cloud, and observability. You’ll work with cross-functional teams and handle defined scope with minimal oversight.

The role emphasizes on-call reliability, IaC with Terraform, Helm, GitOps, automation, and documentation. You will collaborate with security, ground station operations, and product engineering to advance scalable, secure infrastructure.

Qualifications

• 3–5 years of production infrastructure experience in SRE, DevOps, or related fields.
• Competence across Linux, networking, AWS or equivalent cloud, Terraform, containers and Kubernetes, CI/CD, observability.
• Ownership of a production system end-to-end from design to operation.
• On-call experience with measurable reliability outcomes.
• Comfort with automation in Python, Go, or similar for tooling.
• Strong technical writing for design docs and runbooks.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate components of the Northwood infrastructure stack (CI/CD, app platform, cloud/IaC, networking, observability, security tooling).
• Build and maintain infrastructure as code using Terraform, Helm, and GitOps.
• Carry on-call for the infra stack and resolve incidents independently.
• Run post-incident reviews for owned incidents.
• Partner with security and compliance on controls in IAM, vault policies, and SIEM.
• Automate repetitive manual work and maintain runbooks and design docs.
• Collaborate across infra, product engineering, and ground station operations.

Skills

Linux

Networking

AWS

Terraform

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Python/Go

Security tooling

Tools

Terraform

Helm

GitOps

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

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.
• Run post-incident reviews for incidents you owned.
• 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
• Cloud architecture — multi-account AWS, GovCloud, Cloudflare
• 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.