Corporate IT Security Engineer

The posting, as Northwood Space wrote it

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 and parabolic 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

As Corporate IT Security Engineer, you will own the design and implementation of Northwood's identity architecture, ensuring that access to corporate systems, cloud environments, and sensitive government workloads is governed by robust, auditable, and least-privilege controls. This is a mid-level individual contributor role for an engineer with deep Okta expertise and a strong foundation in IAM architecture, SSO, and role-based access control across complex hybrid environments.

You will serve as Northwood's IAM subject-matter expert, designing and maintaining the identity fabric that connects corporate users, contractors, and service accounts to the tools and systems they need — while enforcing the access boundaries required for CUI handling, ITAR compliance, and CMMC Level 2 certification. This role works in close partnership with the Security Engineering Lead, Security Operations Lead, and GRC Lead, and reports to the Head of Security.

Responsibilities

Identity Architecture & Okta Administration

• Own Northwood's Okta environment end-to-end, including tenant configuration, application integrations, lifecycle management, MFA policy enforcement, and directory synchronization.
• Design and maintain Northwood's SSO architecture, ensuring all corporate and government-facing applications are integrated into a consistent, auditable authentication framework.
• Develop and enforce adaptive authentication policies, step-up MFA configurations, and risk-based access controls aligned to the sensitivity of the systems being accessed.
• Manage Okta workflows and automation to support user provisioning, deprovisioning, and access change processes across the employee and contractor lifecycle.
• Maintain Okta system health, audit logging, and integration reliability, ensuring identity telemetry flows into Northwood's SIEM for continuous monitoring.

RBAC & Access Governance

• Design and implement role-based access control frameworks across Northwood's corporate systems, cloud environments, and government workloads, ensuring access is granted on a least-privilege and need-to-know basis.
• Define and maintain role taxonomies, access request workflows, and entitlement review processes that satisfy CMMC, FedRAMP, and NIST 800-171 access control requirements.
• Conduct periodic

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p or status as a lawful permanent resident required to conform with ITAR export regulations.

Preferred Qualifications

• Active TS clearance or higher.
• Experience operating Okta in AWS GovCloud or Microsoft GCC environments, including tenant configuration for government workload access controls.
• Familiarity with Okta Identity Governance (OIG) or similar identity governance and administration (IGA) platforms.
• Experience with Cloudflare Zero Trust access policies and integration with Okta for identity-aware network access enforcement.
• Hands-on experience with privileged access management platforms such as CyberArk, BeyondTrust, or equivalent.
• Background in aerospace, defense, critical infrastructure, or other government-adjacent regulated environments.
• Experience supporting CMMC, FedRAMP, or SOC 2 audits in an IAM engineering capacity.
• Okta Certified Administrator, Okta Certified Professional, or equivalent identity platform certification.
• CISSP, CISM, or equivalent professional security certification.

Additional Information

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.

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