Senior Software Engineer, Mission Optimization

About this role

Welcome to Planet. We believe in using space to help life on Earth.

Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. This constellation delivers an unprecedented dataset of empirical information via a revolutionary cloud-based platform to authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. We are both a space company and data company all rolled into one.

Customers and users across the globe use Planet's data to develop new technologies, drive revenue, power research, and solve our world’s toughest obstacles.

As we control every component of hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering, our office is a truly inspiring mix of experts from a variety of domains.

We have a people-centric approach toward culture and community and we strive to iterate in a way that puts our team members first and prepares our company for growth. Join Planet and be a part of our mission to change the way people see the world.

Planet is a global company with employees working remotely world wide and joining us from offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and The Netherlands.

About the Role:

The Mission Optimization team is responsible for continuously improving the operations and productivity of the world’s largest Earth observation satellite constellation. We identify, triage, and resolve the bottlenecks that limit what our fleets can deliver – from contact scheduling and downlink latency, to collection capacity, to concepts of operation for our future missions.

As a Senior Software Engineer on this team you will own optimization initiatives end to end: framing an ambiguous operational problem with data, designing the solution, and driving it into production. You'll work closely with spacecraft and systems engineering groups to understand what our current and future fleets are actually capable of, with the software and operations teams who build and run the systems you're changing, and with Product to stay anchored to customer commitments and SLA risk. Being as effective at building agreement across those boundaries as you are at writing the code is a core part of this job.

This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our San Francisco office 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:

• Own significant optimization initiatives end to end – problem definition, data analysis, solution design, implementation, and measurement of the outcome against fleet SLAs and KPIs

• Design, develop, and maintain mission-critical software that schedules and optimizes activities across our satellite constellations

• Define concepts of operations for current fleets and for new missions and customer use cases, working directly with spacecraft, imaging, and systems engineering teams

• Analyze operational data across the full stack to surface inefficiencies previously missed, and make the case for addressing them

• Act as a technical advisor within the team and mentor earlier-career engineers

• Represent the team's technical position with stakeholders across engineering, operations, and product

What You Bring:

• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent depth achieved through your work

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field

• Deep proficiency in Python or a comparable language, with a track record of designing and shipping systems that other people depend on

• Ability to take an ambiguous, loosely scoped problem and drive it to a measurable outcome with minimal direction

• Data-driven approach, including statistical analysis and reasoning over large operational datasets

• Effective written and verbal communication with technical and non-technical audiences.

• Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Familiarity with satellite engineering, orbital mechanics, or the space environment and its operational constraints

• Hands-on experience operating spacecraft or other remote/autonomous systems

• Experience defining concepts of operations for complex systems

• Background in optimization, scheduling, or operations research — constraint solvers, heuristics, combinatorial optimization

• Experience with DevOps tooling and practices (Git, GitLab, Docker, CI/CD, Linux, Sentry, Datadog)

• Contributions to open-source software

Application Deadline:

EAR/ITAR Requirements:

This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

Benefits While Working at Planet:

These offerings are dependent on employment type and geographical location, based upon applicable law or company policy.

• Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans

• Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution

• Generous Paid Time Off in addition to holidays and company-wide days off

• 16 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave

• Wellness Program and Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Home Office Reimbursement

• Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement

• Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning

• Equity

• Commuter Benefits (if local to an office)

• Volunteering Paid Time Off

Compensation:

The US base salary range for this full-time position at the commencement of employment is listed below. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives (bonus and equity). The final salary range is determined by job related experience, skills and location. The range displays our typical hiring range for new hire salaries in US locations only. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location…