Application Guide
How to Apply for Senior Software Engineer
at Planet
🏢 About Planet
Planet operates the world's largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites, providing daily global coverage that enables organizations to monitor environmental changes, agricultural trends, and humanitarian crises. Unlike traditional satellite companies, Planet democratizes access to timely geospatial data through its scalable platform, empowering governments, businesses, and researchers to make data-driven decisions for planetary stewardship. Working here means contributing to technology that addresses climate change, deforestation, and disaster response on a global scale.
About This Role
This Senior Software Engineer role focuses on enhancing Planet's event-driven architecture for processing massive volumes of satellite telemetry data, specifically improving performance and flexibility of data pipelines that transform raw imagery into actionable customer insights. You'll be responsible for building and maintaining APIs that deliver real-time and historical analytics from customer telemetry, directly impacting how clients like agricultural firms monitor crop health or NGOs track deforestation. Your work will enable data-driven decision-making at scale by ensuring reliable, high-performance data processing for Planet's global Earth observation platform.
💡 A Day in the Life
A typical day might start with reviewing telemetry data pipeline performance metrics and addressing any overnight issues affecting customer reporting. You'd spend morning hours collaborating with data scientists to refine API specifications for new analytics features, then implement improvements to event-driven components using Python and Golang. Afternoons could involve code reviews for pipeline changes, evaluating open-source tools for upcoming data engineering needs, and documenting API enhancements that help customers derive insights from satellite imagery data.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who Planet Is Looking For
- Has 6+ years experience building data-intensive applications in Python and Golang, with specific expertise in designing event-driven architectures for large-scale data processing
- Demonstrates hands-on experience with BigQuery and Timescale for managing telemetry data, plus practical knowledge of OpenAPI/REST code generation for API development
- Shows proven ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues in customer-facing data pipelines and select appropriate open-source tools for data engineering challenges
- Thrives in cross-functional teams that prioritize customer requirements, with excellent English communication skills for collaborating with data scientists, product managers, and satellite operations teams
📝 Tips for Applying to Planet
Highlight specific examples where you've improved event-driven architectures for performance/flexibility - quantify results like latency reduction or throughput increases
Demonstrate your experience with both Python and Golang in data pipeline contexts, not just general programming (mention specific libraries/frameworks used)
Include concrete examples of working with BigQuery and Timescale for telemetry or time-series data, describing schema designs or optimization techniques you've implemented
Show how you've used OpenAPI specifications to generate REST APIs that delivered actionable insights from data, not just basic CRUD endpoints
Tailor your resume to show customer-centric development - describe projects where you directly addressed customer requirements through telemetry analysis or reporting features
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
["Explain your experience with event-driven architectures in data-intensive environments, specifically how you've improved performance and flexibility", "Describe your approach to building data processing pipelines that handle large volumes of telemetry data, mentioning specific technologies you've used", "Highlight examples where you've developed APIs that transformed raw data into actionable insights for decision-making", "Connect your background to Planet's mission of Earth stewardship - show how your technical skills could contribute to environmental monitoring or disaster response use cases"]
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → Explore Planet's daily satellite imagery products and how customers use them (check their website's use cases for agriculture, forestry, etc.)
- → Understand Planet's data platform architecture through their technical blog posts or conference talks about their satellite data processing
- → Research the specific challenges of processing Earth observation data at scale - latency requirements, data volume, and accuracy needs
- → Look into Planet's recent projects or partnerships related to environmental monitoring, climate change, or disaster response
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Submitting a generic software engineering resume without highlighting specific experience with event-driven architectures, data pipelines, or telemetry processing
- Failing to demonstrate practical experience with both Python and Golang in data engineering contexts (not just web development)
- Not showing understanding of Planet's mission or how satellite data creates value - treating this as just another backend engineering role
📅 Application Timeline
This position is open until filled. However, we recommend applying as soon as possible as roles at mission-driven organizations tend to fill quickly.
Typical hiring timeline:
Application Review
1-2 weeks
Initial Screening
Phone call or written assessment
Interviews
1-2 rounds, usually virtual
Offer
Congratulations!