Software Engineer, Compute Team

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:

Planet's satellite constellations image the world's surface every day, delivering raw images through hundreds of workflows to provide processed imagery, analysis, and insights to our customers. The Compute Team develops and operates the in-house distributed systems that ensure these workflows are reliably executed at vast scale 24x7. These systems enable new techniques to understand our changing world, especially as AI models enable a wider range of analyses. You will be responsible for the development and operation of these backend services using a tech stack consisting of Go, Python, and Kubernetes running on Google’s Cloud. Ideal candidates are pragmatic software engineers who apply sound engineering principles and operational discipline to large backend data services.

This is a full-time, remote position based in the United States. If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:

• Spearheads the evolution of compute and data delivery services with an emphasis on scale and user requirements
• Collaborates to enable efficient and rapid access to our variety of new and growing data sets
• Improves reliability and scalability by resolving edge cases, studying failure modes, and writing tests
• Manages underlying persistence layers across Spanner, Redis, PostgreSQL and BigTable
• Owns the operation of these services by measuring performance, creating alerts, runbooks, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies
• Participates in an on-call rotation in support of our team’s services

What You Bring:

• 4+ years of relevant work experience building services in a language like Go or Python, and a clear interest in becoming an expert in both.
• Experience of cloud-native development - containerization, cloud services such as GCP/AWS
• Experience with a large shared codebase, continuous integration and deployment workflows, and tooling like GitLab CI
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, written and oral; can explain deeply technical topics to teammates and users

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Experience with orchestration workflows (e.g., Temporal) and batch/queue processing for high-concurrency systems.
• Expertise in large-scale distributed systems, including data consistency tradeoffs and high-volume networking (e.g., Nginx/Envoy).
• Operational proficiency with Kubernetes, Terraform, ArgoCD, Crossplane, and Linux internals.
• Experience implementing observability tools like Prometheus and Grafana to monitor service performance.
• Experience working with geospatial data, remote sensing, and related domain concepts.

Application Deadline:

September 17, 2026 at 11:59pm PT

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 during the hiring process.

#LI-REMOTE

San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance
Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

Why we care so much about Belonging. 
We’re dedicated to helping the whole Planet, and to do that we must strive to represent all of it within each of our offices and on all of our teams. That’s why Planet is guided by an ultimate north star of Belonging—dreaming big as we approach our ongoing work.  If this job intrigues you, but you’re thinking you might not have all the qualifications, please... do apply!  At Planet, we are looking for well-rounded people from around the world who can contribute to more ways than just what is listed in this job description.  We don’t just fill positions, we aspire to fulfill people’s careers, most excited about folks who are motivated by our underlying humanitarian efforts.  We are a few orbits around the sun before we get to where we want to be, so we hope you’re excited to come along for the ride. 

EEO statement:
Planet is committed to building a community where everyone belongs and we invite people from all backgrounds to apply. Planet is an equal opportunity employer, and committed to providing employment opportunities regardless of race, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, physical disability, mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws. Know Your Rights.

Accommodations: 
Planet is an inclusive community and we know that everyone has their own needs. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation during the hiring process, please reach out to accommodations@planet.com or contact your recruiter with your request. Your message will be confidential and we will be happy to assist you.

Privacy Policy: By clicking "Apply Now" at the top of this job posting, I acknowledge that I have read the Planet Data Privacy Notice for California Staff Members and Applicants, and hereby consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of my personal information as described therein.

Privacy Policy (European Applicants): By clicking "Apply Now" at the top of this job posting, I acknowledge that I have read the Candidate Privacy Notice GDPR Planet Labs Europe, and hereby consent to the collection, processing, use, and storage of my personal information as described therein.

AI in Our Interviewing Process: Planet is committed to providing an exceptional interview experience for all candidates. We currently use Metaview to better focus on candidates and less on trying to capture notes. As such, with the candidate's consent, select interviews may be recorded and include a "Planet AI Notetaker" for transcription and summarization purposes. Should an interview involve use of AI interview technologies, the candidate will receive notification and have the ability to opt out both in advance and/or real-time. Opting out will not affect one's candidacy.

Candidate AI Policy: Planet embraces Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, and we encourage its responsible use. We understand that candidates may use various resources, including AI tools, to prepare for interviews and assessments. However, during any live interview stage or when actively completing assessments for this position, the use of AI tools—e.g. Large Language Models (LLMs), deep fake technology, etc.—is strictly prohibited unless explicitly prompted by an interviewer or assessment instructions. If you are unsure about acceptable use, please contact your recruiter for clarification. If an AI tool or similar technology is desired as an accommodation, please contact accommodations@planet.com with your request for assistance. Your message will be confidential, and we will be happy to assist you. Violation of this policy may result in disqualification of your application.