Site Reliability Engineer

Planetlabs; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 190,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Planet is hiring for a Direct Access Service Infrastructure engineer to build, deploy, and operate critical compute software supporting on-premises and cloud environments in a next-generation Constellation-as-a-Service platform. You will work from our San Francisco office 3 days a week, partnering with cross-functional teams to enable robust, reproducible deployments across environments.

You will bring 4+ years of cloud-native experience, strong Kubernetes and IaC skills, and a proactive

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field.
• 4+ years of experience building services that leverage cloud-native infrastructure.
• Experience deploying and maintaining bare-metal and cloud Kubernetes clusters.
• Proficiency with IaC/GitOps tools (Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Kustomize).
• Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Argo CD, CircleCI).
• Experience building highly available, performant services and understanding on-prem hardware implications.

Responsibilities

• Build, deploy, and operate compute services and infrastructure for on-premises and cloud deployments.
• Support end-to-end imaging operations across environments with reliable deployment workflows.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to design and troubleshoot distributed systems.
• Drive deployments, service orchestration, and documentation for cross-platform stakeholders.
• Scale architectures while ensuring service availability and reliability.
• Improve reliability and performance by addressing edge cases and writing tests.

Skills

Python

Bash

Distributed systems

CI/CD

Terraform

Education

BS in CS

Tools

Kubernetes

Talos

RKE2

Proxmox

k3s

Terraform

Ansible

Helm

Kustomize

Jenkins

GitLab CI/CD

Argo CD

CircleCI

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

CUDA

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:

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 Direct Access Service Infrastructure team, directly contributing to our next-generation Constellation as a Service platform. This platform represents a major new offering to our customers that goes beyond traditional cloud-based platforms and supports on-premises deployments.

You will be responsible for building, deploying, and operating critical compute software that supports end-to-end imaging operations within customer on-premises and/or cloud environments. You will use your understanding of internal compute requirements as well as customers' environmental-specific constraints to help design, implement, and support 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.

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

Impact You'll Own:

• Build and deploy computing services and infrastructure in customer environments for a next-generation satellite operations and image processing end-to-end platform
• Operate in a high-impact, tight knit team to architect novel systems for air‑gapped deployments at scale
• Clarify and surface requirements from ambiguous use cases defined by cross‑functional stakeholders, including internal users and external customers
• Responsible for operations such as 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… (continued)

What You Bring:

• 4+ years of experience building services that leverage cloud-native infrastructure and tooling
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or similar
• Experience deploying and maintaining bare-metal and cloud kubernetes through tools such as Talos, RKE2, Proxmox, or k3s
• Proficiency with Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Kustomize, and/or similar IaC / GitOps tooling
• Experience with CI/CD tooling, such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, Argo CD, or CircleCI
• Experience successfully building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant services
• Knowledge of hardware and network 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 skills 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 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

Application Deadline: 11:45p / 23:45