Senior IT Engineer

Cowboy Space Corp. is building the infrastructure to power and connect the orbital economy. Our satellites operate in Low Earth Orbit to collect sunlight and unlock a new class of capabilities: powering on-orbit compute, transmitting energy over infrared lasers between space and Earth and between spacecraft, and moving secure, high-bandwidth optical data. By rethinking how energy and information are produced and shared in orbit, we're opening up new ways to operate both in space and on the ground.Founded in 2024 by Baiju Bhatt, co-founder of Robinhood, Cowboy Space Corp. is backed by leading investors and staffed by people who come from the strongest aerospace and defense organizations. We move fast, take on hard technical problems, and are standing up a new category of space infrastructure.The RoleAs a Senior IT Engineer at Cowboy Space Corp., you'll architect, manage, and secure the systems our company runs on, including the devices, identity, networks, and cloud infrastructure that keep everyone productive in a tightly regulated, ITAR/EAR environment. It's a senior, hands-on role focused on strengthening our infrastructure, tightening security controls, and delivering scalable solutions for the tools and workflows people depend on every day, together with the automation that connects it all across on-premises and cloud deployments.You'll own this surface end to end, designing zero-trust compliance policies, building automation at scale, provisioning cloud infrastructure as code, and holding the line on security baselines and export-control requirements. As our first dedicated IT engineer in Seattle, you'll work shoulder to shoulder with our IT lead, our managed service provider (MSP), and the Security, Compliance, and Infrastructure teams, and you'll lead the initiatives that keep our infrastructure a step ahead of how fast the company is growing.ResponsibilitiesManage and harden our GCC High environment, owning identity, tenant configuration, and the compliance controls that come with operating in government cloudOwn the design and operation of our IT systems end to end, managing and configuring device management and conditional-access controls (Intune, PSSO, Entra) that keep Windows, macOS, and iOS hardware compliant and aligned with zero-trust principles across both cloud and on-premises deploymentsKeep our core IT infrastructure reliable and available, including VDI, directory services, identity and authentication, collaboration tooling, and the SaaS platforms the team runs on day to dayBuild and run the network backbone for a growing office and lab, handling addressing, segmentation, routing, firewalls, and remote access across on-prem and cloud footprintsProvision and manage cloud infrastructure using infrastructure-as-code, applying sound networking and security practices from the start rather than bolting them on laterWrite and maintain automation that removes manual toil across onboarding, configuration, patching, remediation, and reporting, primarily in Python, PowerShell, Bash, and AppleScript, and packaged as reusable, production-grade toolingWire endpoint and infrastructure telemetry into the SIEM and maintain the controls that keep us audit-ready, including CIS-aligned baselines, compliance dashboards, and the device, configuration, and data-handling requirements that ITAR and EAR demandPartner with Security, Compliance, and Infrastructure teams on endpoint and infrastructure standards, carry systems through audits, keep documentation and runbooks current, and act as the senior escalation point above our MSPBasic QualificationsA Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a comparable technical field plus 7+ years of relevant IT experienceReal experience running Microsoft 365 inside a GCC High (Government Community Cloud High) tenantDepth managing Apple macOS and iOS at enterprise scale alongside Windows 11 and Windows ServerStrong networking chops spanning on-prem and cloud, comfortable with addressing, DNS, segmentation, routing, firewalls, and remote accessA track record standing up and operating infrastructure in both on-premises and cloud environmentsHands-on experience putting security controls and compliance frameworks in place where the rules actually matterPreferred QualificationsCloud & InfrastructureSolid command of at least one major cloud (AWS preferred; Google Cloud or Azure welcome), including how its networking and security building blocks fit together, such as VPC design, EC2, security groups, transit gateways, and route tablesDeep Linux systems experience, comfortable across systemd, networkd, Netplan, iptables, SSH, and DockerHands-on with site-to-site and remote-access VPN, including IPsecA working grasp of cryptography and infrastructure security fundamentals, including PKI, IPsec, FIPS compliance requirements, IAM, and CI/CD securityScripting, Automation & IdentityGenuine skill writing automations in Python, including serverless functions on AWS L