Application Guide
How to Apply for Software Engineer, Compute Team
at Planet
🏢 About Planet
Planet operates the largest fleet of Earth-imaging satellites, providing daily, global coverage of our planet. Their mission to make global change visible, accessible, and actionable is unique in the geospatial industry, and they are committed to using technology for environmental stewardship and sustainability.
About This Role
As a Software Engineer on the Compute Team, you will build and scale the core infrastructure that powers Planet's satellite data delivery to millions of users. You'll own critical services like Spanner, Redis, and BigTable, ensuring low-latency access to petabytes of imagery—directly impacting climate monitoring, agriculture, and disaster response.
💡 A Day in the Life
Start your day by reviewing on-call alerts for database latency or service degradation. Then, pair with a teammate to design a new API endpoint for faster data retrieval. In the afternoon, you write tests for a failure scenario you discovered in Redis, and end the day by documenting a runbook for the team.
🚀 Application Tools
🎯 Who Planet Is Looking For
- You have 4+ years of experience building production services in Go or Python, with a desire to master both languages.
- You are comfortable operating cloud-native infrastructure (GCP/AWS) and managing persistence layers like Spanner, PostgreSQL, Redis, or BigTable.
- You thrive in a collaborative, remote-first environment and can explain complex technical trade-offs to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.
- You have experience with CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab CI) and writing tests to prevent failures at scale.
📝 Tips for Applying to Planet
Highlight any experience with geospatial data, satellite imagery, or large-scale data delivery in your resume.
In your cover letter, mention specific Planet products (e.g., PlanetScope, SkySat) and how you'd improve their compute infrastructure.
Showcase your experience with Go and Python by linking to open-source contributions or side projects that involve distributed systems.
Emphasize your ownership of production databases—mention specific incidents you resolved or performance improvements you made.
Tailor your application to mention remote work experience and your setup for async communication (e.g., using Slack, GitLab, docs).
✉️ What to Emphasize in Your Cover Letter
["Your passion for Planet's mission of global monitoring and environmental impact.", 'Your hands-on experience with at least one of the mentioned persistence layers (Spanner, Redis, PostgreSQL, BigTable).', 'Your ability to work autonomously and communicate effectively in a remote, distributed team.', 'Your interest in both Go and Python, and your willingness to become an expert in both.']
Generate Cover Letter →🔍 Research Before Applying
To stand out, make sure you've researched:
- → Read Planet's blog posts about their satellite data pipeline and compute infrastructure (e.g., on their engineering blog).
- → Familiarize yourself with the Planet API and how developers access imagery.
- → Understand the scale of Planet's data: over 3 million images per day and 500+ satellites.
- → Review their open-source contributions or public talks about their tech stack (e.g., on YouTube).
💬 Prepare for These Interview Topics
Based on this role, you may be asked about:
⚠️ Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Don't focus solely on frontend or mobile experience—this role is backend infrastructure.
- Avoid vague statements like 'I love working with data' without mentioning specific databases or tools.
- Don't ignore the remote aspect: failing to demonstrate async communication skills or self-motivation can be a dealbreaker.
📅 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!