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Edge Compute Engineer

Planet
Remote
United States

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 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 rolled into one.

In this role, you will join Planet's High Resolution team, directly contributing to our next-generation Constellation Service platform. You will be responsible for building, deploying, and operating critical compute software that supports end-to-end imaging operations within customer environments. You will use your understanding of internal compute requirements as well as customers' environmental-specific constraints to help design and implement a robust system for reproducible deployments across operating environments, to guarantee the reliability, scalability, and availability of our services. To do this, you will partner closely with cross-functional engineering teams to enable and empower the integration of software solutions and the troubleshooting of distributed systems. Ideal candidates will have a passion for programming, photography, remote sensing, earth sciences and geography, with a willingness to learn about geospatial data and concepts. 

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:

  • Build and deploy software in customer environments for a next-generation imagery processing system
  • Own deployments, service orchestration, and documentation for cross platform stakeholders
  • Scale architecture while ensuring availability of services
  • Improve reliability and scalability by resolving edge cases, studying failure modes, and writing tests
  • Participate in on-call rotations to ensure operational excellence  
  • Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Engineering Management, and engineering teams on system design and roadmapping for scalable and robust solutions.

What You Bring:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or similar
  • 6+ years of experience building services that leverage cloud-native infrastructure and tooling
  • Experience deploying and maintaining bare-metal K8s through tools such as K3s, RKE2, TalOS
  • Proficient with Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Kustomize, and/or similar IaC / GitOps tooling
  • Experience successfully building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant services
  • Knowledge of hardware-level implications of on-prem compute
  • Experience with platform optimization, particularly resource optimization, management, and cluster tuning in a constrained environment
  • Ability to observe and troubleshoot distributed systems with tools such as Alloy, Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry.
  • Advanced in Python, Bash, and other tooling as appropriate to build services and meet product goals
  • Excellent communication skills and the ability to work through collaboration with cross-functional engineering teams
  • Experience working with Jira for task management and progress tracking

What Makes You Stand Out: 

  • Experience working with geospatial data and concepts
  • Exposure to geospatial raster data processing with tools such as GDAL and NumPy
  • Experience with CUDA-based GPU programs.
  • Security expertise in sensitive environments, including implementing zero-trust architectures, hardening Kubernetes clusters, conducting security audits, and deploying workloads in air-gapped environments
#LI-REMOTE

Application Deadline: December 16, 11:59pm PST

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 during the hiring process.

New York City + California Salary Range
$153,100$191,300 USD
San Francisco Salary Range
$162,600$203,000 USD
US National Salary Range
$142,800$178,500 USD

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.