How to apply for Senior Software Engineer, Storage Infrastructure

About Planet

Planet operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites and delivers that data through a cloud platform to commercial, environmental, and humanitarian users. The company controls hardware design, manufacturing, data processing, and software engineering in-house. Working here means your infrastructure supports global Earth-imaging data used for research and revenue.

About the role

This role sits on the Storage team, which builds and expands the core object and metadata storage platform behind Planet's data infrastructure. You will work on a horizontally scalable architecture that lets other teams focus on their own products. The impact is direct: storage reliability and scale determine whether Planet's imagery is available and usable.

A typical day

A typical day likely involves reviewing storage system designs, writing or reviewing code for the object and metadata platform, and working with other engineering teams on their storage needs. You may also respond to operational issues or plan capacity for growing data volumes. Ask the hiring team about on-call expectations and how the Storage team coordinates across time zones.

Who Planet is looking for

• Experience designing and operating distributed storage systems, object stores, or metadata platforms at scale.
• Strong background in horizontally scalable architecture, including partitioning, replication, and consistency trade-offs.
• Comfortable working remotely across time zones with engineers in the US, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and the Netherlands.
• Able to reason about storage performance, durability, and cost for large volumes of satellite imagery and metadata.

Tips for this application

• Name specific storage systems you have built or operated, such as object stores, blob storage, or metadata databases, and state the scale in numbers.
• Connect your storage work to data-heavy domains like imagery, geospatial data, or large-scale analytics pipelines.
• Because Planet hires remotely worldwide, state your location and time-zone overlap with US teams clearly in your resume or cover letter.
• Mention any experience with cloud platforms and infrastructure-as-code, since Planet's platform is cloud-based.
• Reference Planet's satellite constellation and data platform in your application to show you understand what the storage layer supports.

What to cover in your cover letter

Describe a storage system you designed or scaled and the specific problems you solved. Explain how your work enabled other teams to build on top of your platform. Show you understand Planet's data volume and why object and metadata storage matters for satellite imagery. State your remote work setup and time-zone overlap.

Research before applying

• Read Planet's product pages on satellite imagery and the cloud platform to understand what data the storage team supports.
• Look up Planet's engineering blog or public talks for details on their data pipeline and storage architecture.
• Check Planet's office locations and remote work policy to confirm how the Storage team is distributed.
• Review the full job description on Planet's careers page for any storage technologies or requirements not included here.

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• How you would design a horizontally scalable object storage system for satellite imagery and metadata.
• Trade-offs between consistency, availability, and durability in a distributed storage platform.
• A time you debugged or resolved a production storage issue at scale.
• How to support multiple internal teams with different storage and metadata needs.
• How you would handle growth in data volume from a satellite constellation.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Listing storage technologies without explaining the scale or problems you solved with them.
• Ignoring the remote and global nature of the team; not stating your location or time-zone overlap.
• Treating this as a generic backend role and not addressing object storage, metadata, or horizontal scalability.