Infrastructure Engineer - Early Career

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

Entry-level role on the Northwood Infrastructure team. Broad exposure across the stack with

guided growth into one or more areas of depth.

Responsibilities

• Learn the Northwood stack in depth — AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, Vault, observability, networking — and identify one or more areas to go deeper in over time.
• Execute scoped infrastructure tasks. With guidance from senior engineers, execute work that is reviewed and merged without significant rework.
• Contribute to infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, observability configuration, and operational tooling across the stack.
• Shadow on-call rotations. Triage incidents and escalate as needed to senior engineers.
• Participate in post-incident reviews to build operational judgment.
• Write clear runbooks, component docs, and design notes for work you own. Documentation is part of the deliverable.
• Pair with senior engineers on larger projects to build pattern recognition for how infrastructure decisions are made and tradeoffs evaluated.

Basic Qualifications

• 0-2 years of professional experience in infrastructure, platform, DevOps, SRE, networking, or systems engineering.
• Strong interest in infrastructure engineering and a clear willingness to go deep on one or more facets of the stack.
• Working familiarity with Linux, networking, and at least one major cloud provider.
• Some experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, or similar) and version control with Git.
• Comfortable reading and writing code in at least one language (Python, Go, Bash, or similar).
• Strong written communication. Able to describe problems, document work, and ask good questions.

Preferred Qualifications

A demonstrated interest in one or more of the following through coursework, side projects, prior internships, or homelab work. We're looking for genuine curiosity and a track record of following through on learning.

• Networking — enterprise, site, or core (Routing, VPNs, firewalls, switching)
• Security engineering — Vault, identity and access management, SIEM, hardening
• Compliance — CMMC, FedRAMP, NIST 800-171, ITAR
• Observability — Prometheus or VictoriaMetrics, Grafana, log pipelines
• App platform — Kubernetes, Podman, ArgoCD, GitOps
• CI/CD — pipeline design, scanning and linting, release engineering
• Cloud architecture — AWS, GovCloud, Cloudflare
• On-prem and edge — bringing up systems in remote or austere environments

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.