Senior Software Engineer

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 is building sovereign deployments of its platform for customers who need to keep control of where their data and services run, and we are looking for a Senior DevOps Engineer to help us deliver and run them. The flagship example is the Copernicus Data Space Ecosystem (CDSE), which gives thousands of users free, instant access to Copernicus Sentinel data and processing services, in close collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Earth Observation community. Sovereign environments come with strict requirements for availability, security and data residency, often backed by contractual SLAs. Meeting them means designing and proving an operating model, while keeping each deployment as consistent as possible with the rest of Planet's platform

This is a hands-on role at the intersection of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering. You will work alongside software, platform and infrastructure engineers to design, deploy and operate Kubernetes-based production systems that are automated, observable and built to stay available. You will help improve the components and the solution itself, and share your reliability expertise to raise the bar across the teams you work with. The team operates across our Graz and Ljubljana offices, combining asynchronous communication with occasional cross-site meetups.

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

Impact You’ll Own:

• Operate and evolve Kubernetes-based platforms across CDSE and our other sovereign deployments, including upgrades, capacity planning, networking and autoscaling. Deploy Planet's platform services into environments with different hosting, security and data residency constraints, keeping them consistent with our other deployments. 
• Define infrastructure as code and GitOps-style release workflows (Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI) so that environments are reproducible, reviewable and quick to roll out or roll back.
• Own the reliability of what you operate: define SLIs and SLOs, build and tune alerts, Grafana dashboards and runbooks, load test, and report on availability against agreed SLAs.
• Respond to incidents, lead blameless post-mortems and turn the lessons into lasting fixes. Participate in the on-call rotation for CDSE and related services.
• Operate the stateful building blocks around our services, such as PostgreSQL/PostGIS, object storage and search indices, including backup, restore and disaster recovery.
• Contribute to security and compliance work: access control, secrets management, patching, vulnerability management and evidence for audits and customer security reviews.
• Work with project partners and customer technical teams to troubleshoot, plan changes and keep operational documentation accurate.
• Review code and infrastructure changes, mentor teammates, and use AI tooling thoughtfully, holding AI-assisted work to the same bar as anything written by hand.

What You Bring:

• 6+ years in DevOps, SRE or infrastructure engineering, with operational production experience running distributed, low-latency, high-volume services.
• Bachelor's degree in a technical field such as Computer Science, Geosciences or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Solid hands-on experience operating Kubernetes or Nomad in production -  troubleshooting, upgrades, ingress and networking, resource management and autoscaling.
• Experience with infrastructure as code and CI/CD (e.g. Terraform, Helm, GitLab CI), Git and Docker. 
• Experience with monitoring and observability tooling (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, centralised logging) and with defining meaningful alerts.
• Solid Linux and networking fundamentals, and scripting or programming skills in Python, Go or Bash.
• Experience with at least one major cloud (GCP or AWS) or comparable infrastructure such as OpenStack, including object storage (S3 or similar).
• Working knowledge of relational databases, ideally PostgreSQL, in an operational setting.
• Experience handling incidents and taking part in an on-call rotation.
• Excellent written and verbal communication. You are comfortable writing a design proposal, asking for feedback and collaborating across time zones.
• Ability to learn new technologies quickly, work through ambiguity and make sound calls under pressure.
• Professional working proficiency in English, the language of the company.

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Experience with sovereign, regulated or public-sector environments, such as data residency requirements, ISO 27001 or comparable security frameworks.
• Experience with GitOps tooling (e.g. Argo CD, Flux).
• Experience operating Java services (JVM tuning, memory and garbage collection troubleshooting) and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch.
• Familiarity with Earth Observation data and standards, such as COGs, STAC and OGC web services, or with openEO.

Application Deadline:

11:45p / 23:45 CET on the date stated below. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis. This posting may be removed earlier than projected if a suitable pool of applications has been received. For this reason, we recommend applying as soon as you are able to.

Benefits While Working at Planet:

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

• Paid time off including vacation, holidays and company-wide days off 
• Employee Wellness Program 
• Home Office Reimbursement
• Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement
• Tuition Reimbursement and access to LinkedIn Learning
• Equity 
• Volunteering Paid Time Off

Compensation:

The expected starting gross salary range for this role is listed below. Individual placement within this range is determined objectively based on gender-neutral criteria such as your skills, qualifications, and professional experience. This position may also be eligible for discretionary bonuses and/or equity.

Austria Salary Range

€68.500—€85.600 EUR

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 [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.