About the Role:Planet is looking for a Senior Engineering Manager with experience in guiding and mentoring high-performing engineering teams. In this role, you will lead engineering teams delivering novel machine learning powered products focused on Defense and Intelligence customers. The teams work from research and development, designing algorithms, integrating them into production, and maintaining them via MLOps. For example, the team has developed road and building monitoring products based on our satellite imagery, and built a SuperRes product to enhance our medium resolution imagery. This is a servant leadership role focused on enabling your team members to do their best work in a highly collaborative, distributed environment.
This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our Washington DC office 3 days per week.
Impact You'll Own:- Guide your team of machine learning engineers to deliver successful ML products
- Mentor, coach and unblock your team members, helping them succeed and grow their careers
- Ensure efficient shipping of product improvements and features
- Partner with your product management counterparts to take strategic and tactical decisions
- Define and implement team processes, including for task planning, code reviews and on-call rotations
- Establish sound engineering practices to build software and design training & inference pipelines
- Collaborate across our engineering organization and other cross functional teams to align efforts
What You Bring:- 6+ years of relevant work experience, with 4+ years of supervisory/leadership experience, with ability to build, retain, and grow diverse, geographically dispersed teams
- Bachelor's degree in a relevant field
- Experience in delivering data-intensive software products at scale
- Solid understanding of fundamentals in software engineering, statistics and machine learning
- Success in establishing and evolving operational practices in a software engineering organization
- Experience owning and maintaining ML models in production
- Experience with distributed cloud computing
- Excellent interpersonal skills, both verbal and written, with the ability to explain complex technical issues accurately to technical and non-technical audiences
What Makes You Stand Out:- Experience building products using sensor or geospatial data
- Experience in remote sensing or related fields
- Ability to obtain security clearance
Application Deadline:October 22, 2026 by 11:59p / 23:59 CET (Central European Time)
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.
US National Salary Range
$160,600-$200,800 USD
San Francisco Fair Chance OrdinancePursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
