Senior Engineering Manager, Forest Ecosystems

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, and The Netherlands.

About The Role

Planet is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager with a proven background in guiding and mentoring high-performing engineering teams.

In this role, you will be responsible for the Forest Ecosystems engineering team. We are on a mission to map, measure, and monitor the world’s forests using high resolution satellite imagery. Our team works with multi-sensor earth observations data, developing workflows that integrate measurements from Planet’s unique satellite constellation with public data sources, including multispectral, LiDAR, and SAR data. We are building a data pipeline that transforms this firehose of imagery into high-quality maps of forest variables, like aboveground carbon density. This includes image calibration and normalization, coregistration, composition into higher level imagery assets (like mosaics), and running machine learning model inference at scale.

This is very much a “servant leadership” role, with a high emphasis on enabling your team members to do their best work in an environment that sets them up for success. In particular, you’ll ensure engineers are unblocked on dependencies, take the lead in defining the “what” and “why” of the team’s work, and organize that work in a way that best aligns with organizational and team practices.

The team has a highly collaborative culture and is distributed remotely across USA and Canada.

Impact You’ll Own

• Guide your team of software engineers and data scientists to deliver successful products
• Partner with your product management counterpart to take strategic and tactical decisions
• Define and implement team processes, including for task planning, code reviews and on-call rotations
• Mentor, coach and unblock your team members, helping them succeed and grow their careers
• Collaborate across our engineering organization and other cross functional teams to align efforts
• Ensure efficient shipping of product improvements and features
• Establish sound engineering practices to build software and design training & inference pipelines

What You Bring

• 4+ years of experience as a manager, with ability to build, retain, and grow diverse, geographically dispersed teams.
• Solid understanding of fundamentals in software engineering, statistics and machine learning
• Proven experience in delivering data-intensive software products at scale
• Excellent interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to explain complex technical issues accurately to technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience owning and maintaining ML models in production
• Experience with distributed cloud computing
• Demonstrated success in establishing and evolving operational practices in a software engineering organization

What Makes You Stand Out

• Interest in forest ecology, environmental science or forestry
• Experience working with satellite or airborne earth observations data
• Experience building products using sensor or geospatial data

Benefits While Working At Planet

• Offsites and Happy Hours
• Recognition Programs
• Wellness program and onsite massages in specific offices
• Flexible Time Off
• Learning and Tuition Reimbursement
• Commuter Benefits
• Comprehensive Health Plan
• Parental Leave
• Volunteering Benefits

Compensation

The US base salary range for this full-time position at the commencement of employment is $136,000 - $224,000. 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.

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 with diversity, equity and inclusion. 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, gender expression, pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding, age, sexual orientation, military or veteran status, or any other protected classification, in accordance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Accommodations

Planet is an inclusive community and we know that everyone has their own needs. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation during the interview process, please call Planet's front office at 669-214-9404 or contact your recruiter with your request. Your message will be confidential and we will be happy to assist you.

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