Director of Software Engineering, Analytics
About The Position
Planet is hiring a Director of Software Engineering to lead, staff, and scale the engineering organization responsible for its analytics: the models and pipelines that turn satellite imagery into answers about changes at sites, activity at ports, and development across regions. These analytics support dual-use products including Global Monitoring Service (GMS) and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) for defense use cases, and are expanding into commercial and civil government applications. The director will lead engineering managers and engineers across Denver, Washington, DC, remote North America, and Europe. This is a build role focused on evolving the organization from hand-built detectors to foundation-model-based methods, scaling from hundreds of monitored sites to thousands, and operating across classified and unclassified environments. The position owns team development, planning, delivery, and the operating model, and reports to the VP of Technology. This is a full-time, hybrid position requiring work from the Denver or Washington, DC office three days per week. The role requires US person status and the ability to obtain and maintain a US government security clearance.
Requirements
- At least 8 years of experience in software or machine learning engineering, focused on computer vision, geospatial analytics, or high-scale data systems.
- At least 6 years of experience leading engineering teams, including direct experience managing engineering managers and growing an organization through a scaling step.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- Track record of shipping machine learning, computer vision, or geospatial analytics into production and owning the results.
- Direct experience leading engineering work governed by ITAR and EAR, with cleared and uncleared staff on the same team.
- Success partnering with a technical lead or architect who owned technical direction while the candidate owned people, planning, and delivery.
- Ability to write clear plans and status reports and drive delivery against dated commitments.
- Defense or intelligence customer exposure, including direct work with operators and analysts.
- US person status and an active US government security clearance, or eligibility to obtain one upon hire.
Nice To Haves
- Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Remote Sensing, or a related technical discipline.
- Experience leading a computer vision team through a shift from task-specific models to foundation models or embeddings.
- Experience delivering analytics into classified, air-gapped, or sovereign cloud environments, such as AWS GovCloud/C2S, and understanding the associated challenges.
- Experience integrating an acquired team or merging two engineering groups.
- Domain knowledge in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), maritime, or activity-based intelligence work.
- Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) clearance.
Responsibilities
- Develop and execute a talent strategy aligned with the product roadmap; create a staffing plan and develop, recruit, and hire talent.
- Manage performance directly and build bench depth to reduce single points of failure.
- Turn program commitments into dated, owned work and report status clearly, including schedule slippage.
- Own the analytics interface with the Global Monitoring Service (GMS) and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) application teams, delivering against shared quality and latency targets.
- Define and execute an operating strategy for developing models that serve classified and unclassified environments while keeping the models dual-use.
- Develop a strategy for evolving the analytics portfolio to keep pace with developments in foundation models.
- Track pipeline costs per site and per square kilometer, and plan for the ten-times scale-up implied by contract growth.
Benefits
- 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 for employees local to an office
- Paid time off for volunteering
- Potential eligibility for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives, including bonus and equity
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
