Planet Labs

Senior Software Engineer, Storage Infrastructure

Planet Labs$116K — $145K *
US-AnywhereRemote in Canada
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 6-8 years of software engineering experience
  • Proficient in Go, Python, or similar languages for backend services and APIs
  • Experience with AI-assisted development tools in engineering workflows
  • Ability to monitor and operate scalable cloud-native software
  • Familiarity with both relational and non-relational datastores
  • Hands-on experience in building and releasing highly available services
  • Strong communication skills tailored for remote work

Responsibilities

  • Build and maintain efficient data access systems
  • Enhance internal data search and image processing services
  • Optimize Elasticsearch indexing for core datasets
  • Take full service ownership, including performance monitoring and incident response
  • Evaluate methods and procedures for complex problem-solving
  • Lead project teams and advise less experienced engineers
  • Contribute to the technical roadmap and architectural direction

Benefits

  • Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
  • Health Savings Account (HSA) with company contribution
  • Generous Paid Time Off plus holidays
  • 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 for local office employees
  • Volunteering Paid Time Off
Full Job Description
About the Role:

The Storage team at Planet builds and expands the core object and metadata storage platform that underpins the company's data infrastructure. The platform provides a horizontally scalable architecture that lets teams across the organization focus on what they do best while Storage handles data lifecycle, indexing, search, and all day-2 operations of managing a datastore at scale. Planet's constellation captures petabytes of imagery that powers everything from climate monitoring to disaster response and precision agriculture - and the Storage team makes sure that data is reliably stored, discoverable, and accessible.

We're looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help evolve this platform. You'll work across the stack - from object storage and metadata indexing to event notification and disaster recovery - on complex systems that operate at massive scale. The ideal candidate acts as an advisor to others, brings specialized depth of expertise, applies broad knowledge of engineering principles, and strengthens the team through technical analysis and collaboration.

This is a full-time, remote position based in the United States or Canada. If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.

Impact You'll Own:
  • Build and maintain systems that provide efficient access to new and growing data sets
  • Extend and improve services for internal data search and image processing
  • Operate and tune Elasticsearch indexing for core data sets
  • Full service ownership by measuring performance, creating alerts, being on call, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies
  • Determine methods and procedures on new assignments, evaluating variable factors to deliver complex solutions
  • Act as an advisor to others and lead project teams or oversee assignments of lower-level engineers
  • Contribute to the technical roadmap and help shape the architectural direction of the team's systems
  • Participate in design reviews and help drive alignment on technical decisions

What You Bring:
  • 6-8 years of software engineering experience
  • Demonstrated software development experience in Go, Python, or similar modern languages building production backend services and APIs
  • Fluency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g. Claude, Copilot) as part of your daily engineering workflow
  • Experience monitoring and operating highly scalable cloud-native software
  • Experience with relational datastores (PostgreSQL or MySQL) and non-relational datastores (e.g. BigTable, Elasticsearch) and an understanding of when to use each
  • Experience building, releasing, and supporting highly available, consistently performant services
  • Excellent communication skills and an ability to work well in a remote setting
  • Experience improving codebases, documentation, and team practices through regular contributions beyond feature work
  • Experience exercising judgment in selecting methods and adapting complex techniques for obtaining results
  • Ability to advise team members on complex technical matters and adapt communication styles for key contacts
  • Ability to analyze complex issues and provide in-depth technical evaluation for distributed backend services

What Makes You Stand Out:
  • 6+ years of Go development experience building production backend services
  • 6+ years of Python development experience building customer-facing APIs
  • Experience maintaining infrastructure with Kubernetes and Terraform
  • Experience building services that leverage cloud-based infrastructure and tooling such as AWS or GCP
  • Experience working with geospatial data before, even tangentially

Application Deadline:

November 25, 2026 at 11:59p PT

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 Canada 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.
#LI-REMOTE

Canada Salary Range

$116,700-$145,900 CAD

San Francisco Fair Chance OrdinancePursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.

About Planet Labs

Planet Labs is an aerospace and defense company that designs and manufactures small satellites for Earth observation. The company offers services such as satellite imagery, data analysis, and geospatial insights. Planet Labs was founded in 2010 and is based in San Francisco, CA.
Learn more about Planet Labs
Size
500 employees
Industry
Founded
2010

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