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Salary: USD 114,200 - 142,700 / 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 Space Operations team is responsible for maintaining and optimizing the health and productivity of this world-class satellite constellation, with teams spanning North America and Berlin.
As a Space Systems Engineer on the Space Operations team, you will support daily satellite operations and play a critical role in keeping Planet's fleet operational and productive. Your responsibilities will include conducting daily fleet health checks, supporting on-call shifts, testing and deploying flight software upgrades, debugging satellite anomalies, and performing on-orbit experiments. You will develop and maintain real-time, mission-critical software solutions for satellite operations, write scripts to aggregate satellite data and generate system monitoring metrics, and analyze data to identify issues and inefficiencies across the full stack of services.
You will create and maintain operational procedures, drive improvements to fleet capacity and productivity through process enhancements, and provide feedback to launch, manufacturing, and spacecraft engineering teams based on on-orbit performance and technical demonstrations. You will also help shape operational strategies for next-generation spacecraft. This role requires collaboration with hardware and software experts across teams to debug anomalies, enhance or create services, and provide operational insights.
The position is full-time and hybrid, requiring three days per week in the San Francisco office. Automation is at the heart of operations, and you'll be expected to be a data-driven self-starter with effective communication skills who adapts quickly to changing tasks and contexts.
**Requirements:**
- 2+ years of relevant work experience
- Bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, or equivalent
- Experience in software development, particularly in Python or similar languages
- Familiarity with the space environment and its challenges
- Data-driven mindset with experience in statistical analysis
- Proactive approach to engineering and problem-solving
- Effective interpersonal and collaboration skills within a technical team
**Preferred Qualifications:**
- Hands-on experience operating spacecraft or remote systems
- Experience and understanding of spacecraft propulsion and guidance, navigation, and control systems
- Experience with hardware-in-the-loop testing infrastructures
- Experience with Agile software development
- Experience with DevOps tools and practices (Git, GitLab, Docker, Jenkins, Bash, Linux, CI/CD, Sentry, Datadog)
- Practical experience in data analysis for problem-solving
- Familiarity with automation and optimization tools
- Contributions to open-source software projects
Note: This position requires access to export-controlled information and is contingent upon the candidate's ability to access applicable export-controlled information without additional export licensing.
