Software Engineer - Mission Control (Satellite Operations)

Planet’s Mission Control is a web-based application that empowers spacecraft operators and analysts to monitor, control, and study our growing fleet of satellites. It is flanked by a number of distributed microservices that handle spacecraft scheduling, tasking, telemetry processing, and similar operational needs. Together, these services automate much of the day-to-day operations of Planet's fleet of satellites.

Impact You'll Own:

• Maintain and augment the automation and services ultimately responsible for the operation of Planet’s satellites. This includes but is not limited to:
  • Specify and implement new APIs and help improve existing ones.
  • Evaluate and choose appropriate software technologies.
  • Design and deploy critical infrastructure.
• Contribute with a team that values open and honest communication, collaboration, self-learning and initiative to solve problems big and small.
• Work closely with various teams across Planet, ranging from Satellite and Ground Operations, to Pipeline and Product teams to ensure the satellite constellation meets all of the needs to achieve Planet’s missions.

What You Bring:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Aerospace Engineering, or similar.
• 2–3 years of relevant work experience.
• Experience in Python programming.
• Experience in API design .
• Experience with automated testing, code review, and documentation.
• Experience with relational database technologies (e.g., Postgres, MySQL ).
• Experience with maintaining peer-reviewed code and continuous integration and deployment workflows and tooling like GitLab CI and Docker or similar.
• Proficient Linux skills.
• Ability to be a self-starter for solving problems in a dynamic environment.
• Ability to clearly communicate and collaborate with cross-functional teams.

What Makes You Stand Out:

• Experience building services that leverage cloud-based infrastructure and tooling such as AWS or GCP .
• Experience maintaining infrastructure with Ansible or similar (e.g., Kubernetes, Terraform ).
• Experience working with monitoring tools like Datadog, Sentry , or equivalent.
• Experience working in microservice environments.
• Knowledge of aerospace concepts.