Application Guide

How to Apply for Site Reliability Engineer

at Planet

🏢 About Planet

Planet operates the world's largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites, providing daily global coverage that empowers environmental, humanitarian, and commercial sectors. As a vertically integrated space and data company, you'll work on cutting-edge technology from satellite design to cloud-based data processing, all with a mission to help life on Earth.

About This Role

As a Site Reliability Engineer at Planet, you'll ensure the reliability and scalability of the cloud platform that delivers satellite imagery to millions. You'll bridge software engineering and operations, automating infrastructure, monitoring systems, and responding to incidents to keep our data flowing seamlessly.

💡 A Day in the Life

You might start by reviewing overnight alerts and dashboards for satellite downlink processing, then automate a manual step in the data pipeline. After a standup with the global team, you could work on a proposal to reduce cloud costs while improving redundancy, and later participate in a post-incident review for a recent service degradation.

🚀 Application Tools

Generate Cover Letter

AI-powered, tailored for Planet

Interview Prep

Practice questions for this role

🎯 Who Planet Is Looking For

  • Has strong experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and Kubernetes, as Planet's platform relies heavily on containerized microservices.
  • Is proficient in at least one programming language (Go, Python, or similar) for automation and tooling, not just scripting.
  • Understands satellite data pipelines or geospatial data processing, as the role involves optimizing data ingestion and delivery.
  • Thrives in a remote-first, global team environment with strong asynchronous communication skills.

📝 Tips for Applying to Planet

1

Highlight any experience with Earth observation data, GIS, or satellite imagery processing in your resume and cover letter.

2

Mention specific contributions to open-source tools or internal platforms that improved reliability or reduced toil.

3

Tailor your resume to emphasize SRE practices like SLOs, error budgets, and incident response, not just DevOps.

4

Include metrics: reduced incident response time, increased uptime, or cost savings from infrastructure optimizations.

5

Showcase remote collaboration examples, such as leading on-call rotations across time zones or documenting runbooks.

✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter

["Express passion for Planet's mission of using space to help life on Earth and how your work as an SRE directly enables that.", 'Describe a specific incident or reliability challenge you solved that had measurable impact on users or business.', 'Emphasize your ability to work autonomously in a remote environment and your experience with distributed teams.', "Connect your skills to Planet's unique stack: large-scale satellite data, cloud-native architecture, and global coverage."]

Generate Cover Letter →

🔍 Research Before Applying

To stand out, make sure you've researched:

  • → Explore Planet's public APIs and sample satellite imagery to understand the data pipeline.
  • → Read Planet's engineering blog or tech talks to learn about their infrastructure choices (e.g., using Kubernetes, Terraform).
  • → Study their recent product launches or partnerships, especially in environmental monitoring or agriculture.
  • → Review their open-source contributions or GitHub to see their technology stack and coding style.

💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics

Based on this role, you may be asked about:

1 Design a system to handle a sudden surge of satellite image downloads (e.g., after a natural disaster).
2 How would you set up monitoring and alerting for a geospatial data pipeline processing petabytes daily?
3 Walk through your approach to incident response: detection, triage, mitigation, and postmortem.
4 Explain how you would implement canary deployments for a critical service serving satellite imagery.
5 Discuss trade-offs between using managed cloud services vs. self-hosted infrastructure for Planet's workload.
Practice Interview Questions →

⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid

  • Don't focus solely on CI/CD pipelines without mentioning reliability metrics like SLOs or error budgets.
  • Avoid generic SRE buzzwords without concrete examples of improvements you've driven.
  • Don't overlook the geospatial aspect; failing to show interest in satellite data can seem like a mismatch.

📅 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:

1

Application Review

1-2 weeks

2

Initial Screening

Phone call or written assessment

3

Interviews

1-2 rounds, usually virtual

✓

Offer

Congratulations!

Ready to Apply?

Good luck with your application to Planet!

← Back to Job Listing Apply Now →