Infrastructure Architect

1st10 is a specialized search firm that builds engineering teams for the top startups on the planet. 1st10 has been retained to find the best Infrastructure Architect to fill this role.

1st10 is working with a startup that is a vertically integrated aerospace company building a faster, more connected future. The startup's mission is to democratize high-speed flight by making supersonic travel flexible, accessible, and sustainable. They believe that rapid, on-demand, point-to-point global mobility will become the new standard for moving people and goods across the planet. To achieve this, they are integrating their advanced airframe and engine technologies with a new flight operations model to make supersonic transport as efficient and economical as commercial air travel is today.

In the near term, they are developing adaptable, high-speed systems to close aircraft performance gaps for the United States government.

They're a team of passionate engineers dedicated to advancing aerospace. They’re generalists with specialist depth, united by a flat structure and a shared obsession with building things that work well. They move fast, stay pragmatic, and let engineering excellence speak louder than hierarchy.

You’re a senior IT leader who still loves being hands‑on. You’ve built and scaled IT foundations in fast-moving, hardware‑centric or engineering‑heavy environments, and you’re comfortable owning everything from identity to endpoints to networks and cloud. You think in architectures and roadmaps, but you’re just as willing to jump into a console, debug a weird device issue, or whiteboard a new access pattern with engineers.

You’ll report directly to the COO and serve as the owner of the company's IT architecture and internal technology stack. You’re excited to lead a small but high‑impact IT function, including managing and developing our Help Desk Specialist, and you know how to set clear SLAs, build clean documentation, and automate the boring stuff. You measure yourself by how much friction you remove for engineers and operators, and you instinctively balance speed with security, compliance, and reliability.

You are dedicated to building an IT backbone that lets a team of hardcore aerospace engineers move faster, safer, and more effectively as we scale.

• Own the IT roadmap: Build and deliver a 12–18‑month plan across identity/SSO, endpoint management, networks, collaboration, backups/DR, logging/observability, access governance, and internal/off‑the‑shelf tooling.
• Engineering enablement: Engage with teams, decompose needs, and architect pragmatic, secure solutions that reduce friction and improve developer/design velocity.
• End‑user productivity: Define endpoint strategy (e.g., COPE), zero‑touch provisioning, and a modern productivity stack that balances speed with security/compliance.
• Cloud & data architecture: Evaluate and implement the right cloud path for regulated workloads (e.g., AWS Gov Cloud (US), Azure Government, or GCP Assured Workloads). Define IAM, key management, logging, and data lifecycle.
• Compliance readiness: Map and operationalize controls for NIST SP 800‑171 Rev. 3 and CMMC 2.0 (policies, technical controls, vendor risk, and audit evidence). Incorporate network segmentation, zero‑trust access, and secure remote work.
• Continuity & risk: Establish RTO/RPO, implement and test backups and disaster recovery, and maintain incident response runbooks with regular tabletop exercises.
• Vendors & budget: Own IT vendor selection, SLAs, renewals, and spend; rationalize tooling and forecast costs.
• Leadership: Coach the Help Desk Specialist; set SLAs, build a documentation/automation culture, and publish simple metrics (availability, device compliance, onboarding time, ticket SLAs).

• 8–12+ years in IT infrastructure/architecture with deep hands‑on in identity, endpoints, networks, and SaaS; proven scaling in startup and/or hardware‑lab environments.
• Experience planning and operating secure cloud for regulated workloads (e.g., Gov Cloud/Azure Gov/GCP Assured Workloads or equivalent controls).
• Comfort turning NIST 800‑171 requirements into…