Senior​/IT Systems Engineer

About Forterra

At Forterra, we are unleashing autonomy at scale to transform the battlefield. Our mission is to build the foundational platforms that enable an intelligent ecosystem to coordinate, adapt, and execute with speed and precision even in the uncertainty and disruption of modern conflict. In an era marked by rapid technological change and evolving threats, we design for flexibility, survivability, and operational dominance.

Forterra delivers weapons, sensors, and battlefield effects through integrated autonomous networks reaching operational areas faster, safer, and without placing human lives  systems operate with distributed control, dynamic routing, and real‑time responsiveness, enabling sustained advantage across complex mission environments.

You’ll join Forterra’s IT Infrastructure team as a hands‑on engineer across our on‑prem virtualization, storage, and backup platforms and the hybrid cloud identity layer above them.

The team runs real hardware it is accountable for:
Proxmox clusters, Net App storage, Veeam and Proxmox Backup Server, and a Microsoft GCC High tenant spanning Entra  Azure Government, alongside AWS, Palo Alto, and Juniper. When we stand up infrastructure at a new site, you’ll be in the room shaping it and on the ground deploying it.

We’re looking for a generalist: someone equally comfortable hardening a Windows Server baseline, debugging a Debian kernel issue on a Proxmox node, and reasoning about Conditional Access policy in a GCC High tenant. The breadth is the point, and so is picking up what the team needs that week rather than defending a narrow specialty. If you’ve built range across the stack and want to use all of it alongside people who will push back on your thinking, this is that role.

You’ll work inside a compliance‑driven environment (CMMC, NIST SP 800‑171, ISO 27001) that shapes design decisions rather than blocking them, partnering daily with Cybersecurity, Network Engineering, and Development.

Travel for this role is roughly 5% for site deployments across Forterra locations. Because we run IT for the business rather than a customer‑facing service, the after‑hours rotation is shared across the team and call‑outs are rare.

• Run and evolve our Proxmox VE clusters and Net App storage: capacity, performance, upgrades, lifecycle.
• Administer Entra  Azure Government in our GCC High tenant, plus Active Directory and Intune, working with Cybersecurity on policy and controls. AWS where it fits.
• Administer and harden Windows Server and Ubuntu/Debian: patching, security baselines, compliance evidence.
• Design infrastructure at enterprise scale with Cybersecurity, Network Engineering, and Development.
• Shape disaster recovery and business continuity for cloud and on‑prem services on Veeam and Proxmox Backup Server.
• Extend our configuration‑as‑code practice in Ansible, turning manual work into repeatable systems for the whole team.

• Mission‑First Mindset
  - We put the needs of the mission and our customers first and understand that the US and its allies have no preordained right to victory in any future conflict.
• Ownership Mentality
  - We’re looking for owners; those who have a natural bias to assume responsibility, a healthy dose of skepticism, and contribute to a culture of performance.
• Technical Aptitude and Intellectual Curiosity
  - We are first and foremost a technology company, and this role requires genuine curiosity to operate across a broad, evolving infrastructure stack rather than staying within a narrow specialty.
• Structured Thinker and Problem Solver
  - Supporting critical infrastructure requires clear communication, sound triage judgment, and the ability to distill complex problems into their essential, actionable…