Senior Software Engineer, Infrastructure

Planet Labs PBC

Job Overview

Location

Indiana, USA

Job Type

Full-time

Full Job Description

📋 Description

• Join Planet, a pioneering company at the forefront of Earth observation, and contribute to our mission of using space to help life on Earth. We design, build, and operate the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history, delivering unprecedented datasets through a revolutionary cloud-based platform. As a hybrid space and data company, we empower authoritative figures across commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors with critical empirical information.
• As a Senior Software Engineer on the Direct Access Service Infrastructure team, you will play a pivotal role in developing our next-generation Constellation as a Service platform. This innovative offering extends beyond traditional cloud-based solutions to support robust on-premises deployments, enabling our customers to leverage Planet's data in diverse environments.
• Your primary responsibility will be to build, deploy, and operate critical compute software that underpins end-to-end imaging operations. This includes managing deployments within customer on-premises and/or cloud environments, ensuring seamless integration and reliable performance.
• You will leverage your deep understanding of internal compute requirements and customer-specific environmental constraints to design, implement, and support a resilient system. This system will guarantee reproducible deployments across various operating environments, ensuring the utmost reliability, scalability, and availability of our services.
• Collaboration is key in this role. You will partner closely with cross-functional engineering teams, including product management, hardware, and other software teams, to enable seamless integration of software solutions and to effectively troubleshoot complex distributed systems.
• You will be instrumental in architecting novel systems designed for large-scale, air-gapped deployments, a critical capability for many of our key customers. This involves tackling unique challenges related to connectivity, security, and resource management in isolated environments.
• A significant part of your role will involve clarifying and surfacing requirements from ambiguous use cases. You will engage with both internal users and external customers to translate their needs into actionable technical specifications, ensuring our platform meets diverse and evolving demands.
• You will be responsible for the full operational lifecycle of the services you build, including deployments, service orchestration, and comprehensive documentation for a wide range of cross-platform stakeholders. This ensures clarity, maintainability, and efficient operation.
• A core focus will be on scaling our architecture while rigorously ensuring the high availability of our services. This requires a proactive approach to identifying potential bottlenecks and implementing solutions that support growth without compromising performance.
• You will drive improvements in reliability and scalability by meticulously resolving edge cases, conducting in-depth studies of failure modes, and implementing comprehensive test suites. Your work will directly contribute to the robustness and resilience of our platform.
• As part of a high-impact, tight-knit team, you will contribute to a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. You will have the opportunity to shape the future of our infrastructure and influence the direction of our technology.
• You will participate in on-call rotations, ensuring the operational excellence and rapid response to any incidents that may arise. This is a critical aspect of maintaining the trust and satisfaction of our customers.
• This is a full-time, remote position based in the United States. If you are located near one of our offices, you will be expected to work from that office three days per week, fostering a hybrid work environment.
• You will be working with cutting-edge technologies and contributing to a product that has a tangible, positive impact on the world, from environmental monitoring and disaster response to agricultural efficiency and urban planning.
• Embrace the challenge of building and deploying computing services and infrastructure in diverse customer environments, pushing the boundaries of what's possible with satellite data and on-premises solutions.
• Contribute to the development of a platform that is not just technologically advanced but also user-centric, ensuring that our customers can easily access and utilize the powerful insights derived from Planet's satellite imagery.
• Help define and implement best practices for infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines, and observability within a complex, distributed system architecture.
• Engage in problem-solving for challenging technical issues, requiring a blend of deep technical expertise and creative thinking to overcome obstacles in distributed systems and on-premises deployments.
• Drive the adoption of new technologies and methodologies that enhance the efficiency, reliability, and security of our infrastructure, ensuring Planet remains at the cutting edge of the industry.
• Foster a collaborative and knowledge-sharing environment within the team, mentoring junior engineers and contributing to the overall technical growth of the organization.
• Be a key player in ensuring the success of our Constellation as a Service offering, directly impacting our ability to serve a growing global customer base with critical Earth data.
• This role offers a unique opportunity to blend expertise in cloud-native infrastructure with the specific demands of on-premises and air-gapped deployments, a niche but increasingly important area in modern technology.
• You will be part of a company that values its employees, promotes a people-centric culture, and is dedicated to making a positive impact on the planet.

🎯 Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of professional experience in software engineering, with a strong focus on building and operating services that leverage cloud-native infrastructure and tooling.
• Proven experience deploying and maintaining Kubernetes clusters on both bare-metal and cloud environments using tools such as Talos, RKE2, Proxmox, or k3s.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps tooling, including Terraform, Ansible, Helm, and/or Kustomize.
• Demonstrated success in building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant distributed systems.
• Solid understanding of hardware and network-level implications pertinent to on-premises compute deployments.
• Experience with platform optimization, specifically resource management, cluster tuning, and performance optimization within constrained environments.
• Ability to observe, troubleshoot, and diagnose issues in distributed systems using observability tools like Alloy, Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
• Advanced proficiency in Python, Bash, and other scripting languages for service development and automation.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with a proven ability to work effectively with cross-functional engineering teams.
• Experience using Jira for task management and progress tracking.
• Experience with CUDA-based GPU programs (Nice-to-have).
• Security expertise in sensitive environments, including zero-trust architectures, Kubernetes hardening, security audits, and air-gapped deployments (Nice-to-have).

Skills & Technologies

Python

Kubernetes

Terraform

Prometheus

Grafana

DevOps

Senior

Remote

Degree Required

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Planet Labs PBC

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About Planet Labs PBC

Planet Labs operates the world’s largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, delivering daily 3–5 m resolution imagery and high-resolution 50 cm tasking. Founded in 2010, the public benefit corporation serves agriculture, government, finance, and sustainability markets via a cloud-native platform that enables rapid analytics and change detection across the globe.

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