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, and The Netherlands.

About the Role:  

Planet is looking for exceptional Engineering Managers to lead our Planetary Variable (PV) product engineering teams. These roles sit in the PV engineering organization that is responsible for creating PVs, in other words “meaningful measurements of conditions on the surface of the Earth, derived from satellite observations”. PVs are data products that are based on our industry-leading remote sensing and machine learning expertise. Our teams develop advanced algorithms that process satellite data from Planet and from public constellations to produce information for businesses, governments and non-profits.

Our two North American based PV teams are Forestry & Woodlands, focussed on mapping forest carbon, and Land Cover, who develop road and building monitoring products including global weekly mapping and change detection. The core algorithms in these systems are typically a combination of computer vision (DL & non-DL) and time series, all cemented in statistical and physical principles. 

In this role, you will lead a team of engineers working together on algorithm development and integration into our distributed compute platform. You will guide the team to prototype and scale Planet’s current and future Planetary Variable products. You will strengthen the processes for model training, validation and maintenance, such as creation of ground truth datasets, design of labeling tools, and setting up data monitoring systems. A solid background in applied statistics and scientific computing is desired, as well as experience building data products.

These teams are remote and distributed across North America.

Impact You’ll Own:

Lead a team of 5+ machine learning engineers 
Hire new engineers according to product strategy, which you will help develop
Mentor, coach and unblock your team members, helping them succeed and grow their careers
Set up team processes for task planning, code reviews and on-call rotations
Establish sound engineering practices to build software and design training & inference pipelines
Supervise recurring ML operations for production algorithms (monitoring, training, benchmarking, deploying, etc)
Work closely with product management and other cross functional teams
 
What You Bring:

4+ years of experience as a software engineer, data scientist or ML engineer in industry
2+ years of experience as a manager
Solid understanding of fundamentals in software engineering, statistics and machine learning
Experience with distributed cloud computing
Experience maintaining ML models in production
Experience with scientific python libraries (e.g. numpy, scipy, TensorFlow, etc)
Proficiency with Linux, Git, Docker
Excellent interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to explain complex technical issues accurately to technical and non-technical audiences

What Makes You Stand Out:

Experience working with sensor or geospatial data
Experience with geospatial python libraries (e.g. pyproj, rasterio, shapely, etc)
Experience in remote sensing or related fields
Proven record of team growth and product releases

Benefits While Working at Planet:

Comprehensive Health Plan
Wellness program and onsite massages in specific offices
Flexible Time Off
Recognition Programs
Commuter Benefits
Learning and Tuition Reimbursement
Parental Leave
Offsites and Happy Hours
Volunteering Benefits