Senior Flight Software Engineer

<div class="content-intro"><p><strong>Welcome to Planet. We believe in using space to help life on Earth.</strong></p> <p>Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites in history. This constellation delivers an unprecedented dataset of empirical information via a revolutionary cloud-based platform to authoritative figures in commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors. We are both a space company and data company all rolled into one.</p> <p>Customers and users across the globe use Planet's data to develop new technologies, drive revenue, power research, and solve our world’s toughest obstacles.</p> <p>As we control every component of hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering, our office is a truly inspiring mix of experts from a variety of domains.</p> <p>We have a people-centric approach toward culture and community and we strive to iterate in a way that puts our team members first and prepares our company for growth. Join Planet and be a part of our mission to change the way people see the world.</p> <p>Planet is a global company with employees working remotely world wide and joining us from offices in San Francisco, Washington DC, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and The Netherlands.</p></div><p><strong>About the Role:</strong></p> <p>Planet’s Flight Software Team is responsible for all of the embedded software that powers our diverse fleet of Superdove, Skysat, Pelican, and Tanager satellites. The software we build and maintain deploys to orbiting spacecraft hundreds of kilometers away and spans many functional verticals, including navigation and avionics, payload control, radio software, and supporting tooling and infrastructure. We collaborate closely with many other teams at Planet, including the Payload, EE, RF, Ground Software, and Missions teams, to deliver reliable and innovative solutions that ensure the success of Planet’s missions.</p> <p>As a Senior Flight Software Engineer at Planet, you will drive the definition, development, maintenance, and optimization of this critical software. Our mission is to create seamless, intuitive systems that enable spacecraft operators, analysts, and engineers at Planet to interact reliably with our assets in space. We strive to minimize operational burden and automate all aspects of satellite operations. </p> <p>In this role, you will solve a wide range of complex engineering challenges in a fast-paced environment. You will define and implement new APIs, refine existing ones, and evaluate and select appropriate software technologies for given use cases. You will lead complicated root cause analyses which may cross software components as well as hardware domains; at times the target you’re debugging will be hundreds of kilometers away with limited bandwidth and periodic windows for communication. You will help decompose high-level functional requirements into actionable implementation roadmaps, and design robust and well-tested abstractions that ensure system scalability and maintainability. You will help design and deploy critical infrastructure, ensuring it meets operational demands and scales effectively to support Planet’s evolving missions. Finally, you will collaborate with operators and other key stakeholders to iteratively refine these systems, ensuring they meet today’s needs while advancing Planet’s broader mission to deliver insights that change how we see the world.</p> <p>This is a full-time, hybrid role which will require you to work from our San Francisco office 3 days per week.</p> <p><strong>Impact You'll Own:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Architect, design, and implement robust, scalable, well-tested, and maintainable software solutions for embedded systems that meet strict performance and reliability requirements.</li> <li>Lead root cause investigations and implement comprehensive fixes for complex defects across a range of targets and runtimes, including bare-metal, RTOS, and Linux-based applica ... (truncated, view full listing at source)