Software Engineer

About The Company
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 provides an unprecedented dataset of empirical information through a revolutionary cloud-based platform, serving authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. As both a space company and a data company, Planet is committed to transforming how the world perceives and interacts with our planet.

About The Role
Planet's Discovery & Delivery APIs team is responsible for systems that enable requesting, transforming, and delivering Planet Data on and off the Planet Insights Platform. As the platform expands its satellite constellations and integrates more derived data products—such as Planetary Variables, Analysis-Ready PlanetScope, and Basemaps—this role will be pivotal in ensuring seamless, high-throughput customer access to these advanced products. The successful candidate will focus on building and maintaining customer-facing services, including Subscriptions, Orders, and Destinations APIs, alongside core internal platform components. The technical stack includes Go, Python, Postgres (PostGIS), and Kubernetes on Google Cloud Platform, emphasizing scalable, resilient, and observable architecture.

The team operates in a highly distributed environment, relying on clear asynchronous communication and open-source geospatial libraries and standards. This position requires strong collaboration skills to build relationships across multiple time zones and occasional participation in team on-site events at Planet's offices. The role is full-time, remote, and based in Canada or the United States, with an expectation to work from the nearest office three days per week if located nearby. The impact of this role includes enabling innovative techniques for understanding our changing world through robust API development and operational excellence.

Qualifications

• 4+ years of experience in software development within a production environment, preferably with Python or Golang
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Geosciences, or a related technical field
• Strong understanding of software engineering best practices and development methodologies
• Experience working with distributed, event-driven architectures in cloud environments such as GCP or AWS
• Proficiency with relational databases, document stores, and key-value stores
• Experience with version control systems such as Git, CI/CD pipelines, and Docker containers
• Excellent problem-solving, analytical, and communication skills
• Ability to learn new technologies independently and navigate ambiguous problem spaces
• Experience with large codebases and conducting code reviews
• Familiarity with geospatial concepts, standards, and data formats such as GeoTIFF, GeoJSON, and STAC (preferred)
• Knowledge of remotely sensed products and metadata (preferred)
• Experience with observability platforms like Grafana (preferred)

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain high-performance, distributed APIs and services in Go and Python that prioritize customer experience and scalability
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including engineers and product managers to align on goals and deliverables
• Write high-quality, maintainable, and well-documented production code, adhering to best practices
• Participate in code reviews to ensure code quality and standards are maintained
• Own the operation and reliability of APIs and services, embracing Site Reliability Engineering principles
• Monitor system performance, conduct load testing, and optimize infrastructure for resilience and efficiency
• Create and manage alerts, dashboards, runbooks, and respond to incidents promptly
• Participate in on-call rotations to support external and internal services, ensuring high availability
• Continuously learn new technologies and contribute to team knowledge sharing
• Contribute to the evolution of the platform by integrating new data products and enhancing existing systems

Benefits

• Extended Health and Dental Coverage
• Health Spending