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Salary: EUR 86,600 - 108,300 / annual
Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history, delivering empirical Earth observation data via a cloud-based platform to commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. The company controls every component of hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering.
The Mission Optimization team is responsible for continuously improving the operations and productivity of the world's largest Earth observation satellite constellation. The team identifies, triages, and resolves bottlenecks that limit fleet delivery—from contact scheduling and downlink latency to collection capacity and concepts of operation for future missions.
As a Senior Space Systems Engineer on this team, you will own the definition of novel concepts of operations. You will take problems that begin as customer commitments, contractual obligations, or unexploited spacecraft capabilities and turn them into operational concepts that engineering teams can build and operators can run. You will operate with substantial latitude, working closely with spacecraft and systems engineering groups to understand current and future fleet capabilities, with software and operations teams who build and run the systems you're changing, and with Product and customer-facing teams to stay anchored to commitments and SLA risk.
Key responsibilities include:
- Define and own concepts of operations for new missions, new spacecraft capabilities, and new customer products, from early design through nominal operations
- Lead optimization initiatives spanning multiple organizations—setting technical direction, building agreement, and holding outcomes against fleet SLAs and KPIs
- Serve as a primary technical interface for the team with stakeholders across engineering, operations, and product
- Translate contractual and customer obligations into operational concepts and capacity commitments the fleet can meet
- Model and analyze fleet performance with operational data to identify where capacity, latency, or agility are being left on the table
- Design, develop, and maintain software solutions that implement these concepts
- Act as a recognized subject-matter expert across Planet and provide technical mentorship within the team
This is a full-time, hybrid role requiring 3 days per week in the Berlin office.
REQUIREMENTS:
- 10+ years of relevant experience in spacecraft operations, mission systems engineering, or a closely related field
- Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering, Systems Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field
- Ownership of concepts of operations for complex operational systems, from definition to implementation
- Working proficiency in Python or a comparable language; ability to model systems, analyze operational data, and contribute production code
- Quantitative approach, including statistical analysis and reasoning over large operational datasets
- Track record of leading technical initiatives across organizational boundaries
- Ability to communicate and negotiate technical positions with senior stakeholders
- Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers
Desirable qualifications:
- Experience operating or designing operations for a large-scale satellite constellation
- Background in optimization, scheduling, or operations research
- Experience taking a new mission from design through commissioning and nominal operations
- Familiarity with commercial Earth Observation, tasking, or fulfillment systems
- Experience in a customer- or partner-facing technical role
- Familiarity with orbital mechanics, link budgets, and spacecraft resource modeling
- Experience with DevOps tooling and practices (Git, GitLab, Docker, CI/CD, Linux, Sentry, Datadog)
Note: This position requires access to U.S. and German/EU export-controlled information. Employment is contingent upon the candidate's ability to access all applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing being required by German, EU, or U.S. authorities.
