Site Reliability Engineer

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 in on-call rotations to ensure operational excellence

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 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.

EAR/ITAR Requirements:

This position requires access to export-controlled information, and as such, employment (or hiring of a contractor) is contingent upon the candidate’s ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by the Bureau of Industry and Security and/or the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.

Benefits While Working at Planet:

These offerings are dependent on employment type and geographical location, based upon applicable law or company policy.

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.

San Francisco Salary Range

$144,500 — $180,600 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 every