Senior Software Engineer, Storage Infrastructure

Planet Labs PBC; United States; Remote; USD 143,000 - 179,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

HSA contributions

Paid time off

Parental leave

Wellness program

Home office support

Phone stipend

Tuition reimbursement

Equity

Commuter benefits

Volunteer PTO

Job summary

Planet Labs PBC is hiring a Senior Software Engineer for its Storage platform, building and evolving scalable object storage and metadata services. You will influence data lifecycle, indexing, search, and disaster recovery, collaborating across teams in a remote-first setup.

The role requires 6–8 years of backend experience, Go and Python expertise, and strong knowledge of cloud-native systems, databases, and distributed architectures.

Qualifications

• 6-8 years of software engineering experience.
• Demonstrated software development experience in Go, Python, or similar modern languages building production backend services and APIs.
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude, Copilot) as part of your daily engineering workflow.
• Experience monitoring and operating highly scalable cloud-native software.
• Experience with relational datastores (PostgreSQL or MySQL) and non-relational datastores (e.g. BigTable, Elasticsearch) and an understanding of when to use each.
• Experience building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant services
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to work well in a remote setting
• Experience improving codebases, documentation, and team practices through regular contributions beyond feature work
• Experience exercising judgment in selecting methods and adapting complex techniques for obtaining results
• Ability to advise team members on complex technical matters and adapt communication styles for key contacts
• Ability to analyze complex issues and provide in-depth technical evaluation for distributed backend services

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain systems that provide efficient access to new and growing data sets.
• Extend and improve services for internal data search and image processing.
• Operate and tune Elasticsearch indexing for core data sets.
• Full service ownership by measuring performance, creating alerts, being on call, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies.
• Determine methods and procedures on new assignments, evaluating variable factors to deliver complex solutions.
• Act as an advisor to others and lead project teams or oversee assignments of lower-level engineers.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap and help shape the architectural direction of the team's systems.
• Participate in design reviews and help drive alignment on technical decisions

Skills

Go

Python

Distributed systems

Remote collaboration

Communication

Code quality

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

AWS

GCP

PostgreSQL

MySQL

Elasticsearch

Job description

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:

The Storage team at Planet builds and expands the core object and metadata storage platform that underpins the company's data infrastructure. The platform provides a horizontally scalable architecture that lets teams across the organization focus on what they do best while Storage handles data lifecycle, indexing, search, and all day-2 operations of managing a datastore at scale. Planet's constellation captures petabytes of imagery that powers everything from climate monitoring to disaster response and precision agriculture - and the Storage team makes sure that data is reliably stored, discoverable, and accessible.

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help evolve this platform. You'll work across the stack - from object storage and metadata indexing to event notification and disaster recovery - on complex systems that operate at massive scale. The ideal candidate acts as an advisor to others, brings specialized depth of expertise, applies broad knowledge of engineering principles, and strengthens the team through technical analysis and collaboration.

This is a full-time, remote position based in the United States or Canada. If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:

• Build and maintain systems that provide efficient access to new and growing data sets
• Extend and improve services for internal data search and image processing
• Operate and tune Elasticsearch indexing for core data sets
• Full service ownership by measuring performance, creating alerts, being on call, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies
• Determine methods and procedures on new assignments, evaluating variable factors to deliver complex solutions
• Act as an advisor to others and lead project teams or oversee assignments of lower-level engineers
• Contribute to the technical roadmap and help shape the architectural direction of the team's systems
• Participate in design reviews and help drive alignment on technical decisions

What You Bring:

• 6-8 years of software engineering experience
• Demonstrated software development experience in Go, Python, or similar modern languages building production backend services and APIs
• Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude, Copilot) as part of your daily engineering workflow
• Experience monitoring and operating highly scalable cloud-native software
• Experience with relational datastores (PostgreSQL or MySQL) and non-relational datastores (e.g. BigTable, Elasticsearch) and an understanding of when to use each
• Experience building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant services
• Excellent communication skills and an ability to work well in a remote setting
• Experience improving codebases, documentation, and team practices through regular contributions beyond feature work
• Experience exercising judgment in selecting methods and adapting complex techniques for obtaining results
• Ability to advise team members on complex technical matters and adapt communication styles for key contacts
• Ability to analyze complex issues and provide in-depth technical evaluation for distributed backend services

What Makes You Stand Out:

• 6+ years of Go development experience building production backend services
• 6+ years of Python development experience building customer-facing APIs
• Experience maintaining infrastructure with Kubernetes and Terraform
• Experience building services that leverage cloud-based infrastructure and tooling such as AWS or GCP
• Experience working with geospatial data before, even tangentially

Application Deadline:

11:45pm PT 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:

• 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.

• $142,800 – $178,500 USD

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,