VP of Dual-Use Defense & Intelligence Engineering

Planetlabs; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 293,000 - 366,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k) matching

Paid time off

Job summary

Planet seeks a Vice President of Defense and Intelligence Solutions Engineering to lead Planet’s end-to-end dual-use software products, including Global Monitoring Service (GMS) and Marine Domain Awareness (MDA).

You will own architecture, development, and deployment across software, AI/ML, analytics, and forward deployed engineering, partnering with Product Management and Leadership to deliver mission-critical geospatial solutions.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering and systems architecture, with a focus on high-scale data, computer vision, or geospatial applications.
• 8+ years of direct experience leading and scaling multi-disciplinary engineering organizations (software, data/ML, platform, and cloud infrastructure).
• Direct experience managing engineering teams, software build pipelines, and data handling governed by ITAR and EAR.
• Demonstrated track record of architecting, building and operating end-to-end dual-use or defense software applications at scale.
• Active high-level government security clearance, or demonstrated eligibility to obtain top-secret clearance upon hire.
• Deep technical expertise in distributed cloud architectures, high-throughput data processing pipelines, API infrastructure, and machine learning model integration.
• Proven ability to drive software delivery metrics, maintain high operational availability/SLAs and establish rigorous engineering practices.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).

Responsibilities

• Engineering Leadership & Delivery: Lead, mentor, and scale multi-disciplinary software engineering teams tasked with building and maintaining end-to-end dual-use products.
• Architecture & Systems Design: Define the software architecture, data models, and technical standards required to deliver high-throughput geospatial analytics, real-time alerting and automated detection platforms at scale.
• Trade & Regulatory Compliance: Oversee engineering development standards and deployment pipelines to ensure full technical compliance with ITAR and EAR.
• Product Co-Development: Partner with Product Management to translate high-level market vision and defense mission requirements into scalable engineering roadmaps, system designs, and execution sprints.
• AI & Agent Integration: Direct the technical integration of advanced machine learning models, analytics, and agentic workflows into Planet's dual use product stack.
• Operational Excellence: Drive software engineering metrics, system reliability, low-latency processing, and secure cloud deployment architectures across commercial and sovereign environments.

Skills

Software engineering

Systems architecture

ITAR/EAR compliance

Leadership

Security clearance

Cloud architecture

API infrastructure

ML integration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

Planet seeks a Vice President of Defense and Intelligence Solutions Engineering to lead Planet’s end-to-end dual-use software products, including Global Monitoring Service (GMS) and Marine Domain Awareness (MDA).

You will own architecture, development, and deployment across software, AI/ML, analytics, and forward deployed engineering, partnering with Product Management and Leadership to deliver mission-critical geospatial solutions.