How to apply for Software Engineer, Platform Operations

About Planet

Planet is unique as the leading provider of daily, global Earth-imaging satellite data, enabling organizations to monitor environmental changes, humanitarian crises, and agricultural trends. Working here means contributing directly to impactful stewardship of our planet through technology that provides timely, actionable insights about Earth's changing surface.

About the role

This Software Engineer, Platform Operations role involves designing Infrastructure-as-Code solutions and managing Kubernetes clusters to ensure Planet's satellite data services remain secure and scalable. You'll be instrumental in modernizing their platform infrastructure, migrating from legacy systems while maintaining observability through Grafana to meet critical service level agreements for customer-facing applications.

A typical day

A typical day involves collaborating with engineering teams to design IaC solutions for new services, monitoring and optimizing Kubernetes clusters through observability dashboards, and working on platform modernization initiatives to migrate legacy systems. You'll balance immediate operational needs with strategic projects to enhance Planet's infrastructure scalability and reliability.

Who Planet is looking for

• Has 4+ years in Platform Engineering/DevOps/SRE with hands-on experience managing production Kubernetes clusters and underlying Linux systems
• Demonstrates practical knowledge of GCP or AWS cloud environments and has implemented CI/CD pipelines using GitLab or ArgoCD with GitOps principles
• Has experience with Terraform or Crossplane for Configuration Management and can articulate how they've used these tools in infrastructure modernization projects
• Understands how to establish Service Level Objectives (SLOs) using observability tools like Grafana to improve operational readiness for platform services

Tips for this application

• Highlight specific experience with Kubernetes cluster management in production environments, not just basic deployment knowledge
• Showcase concrete examples of Infrastructure-as-Code implementations using Terraform or similar tools for cloud infrastructure
• Demonstrate understanding of platform modernization by describing a legacy-to-new system migration you've contributed to
• Mention any experience with Earth observation data, satellite systems, or geospatial platforms to show domain relevance
• Quantify your impact on service reliability or scalability improvements in previous Platform Engineering roles

What to cover in your cover letter

['Your experience with Kubernetes cluster management and how it supported service scalability', "Specific Infrastructure-as-Code projects you've implemented using Terraform or similar tools", "How you've contributed to platform modernization or legacy system migrations", 'Your approach to establishing observability and SLOs for critical services']

Research before applying

• Planet's satellite constellation and how their daily imaging data is used by customers (check their use cases page)
• Their technical blog posts about platform infrastructure and engineering challenges
• Recent news about Planet's platform services or partnerships with government/enterprise clients
• Their open source contributions or technical talks at conferences about their infrastructure

Likely interview topics

Based on the job description, expect questions about:

• Walk us through how you would design and implement IaC for a new Kubernetes cluster deployment on GCP
• Describe your experience with platform modernization - what challenges did you face migrating from legacy systems?
• How do you establish and maintain Service Level Objectives for platform services using observability tools?
• Explain your approach to managing and scaling Kubernetes clusters to meet changing customer demand
• What GitOps principles have you implemented in CI/CD pipelines, and how did they improve your workflow?

Common mistakes to avoid

• Only listing basic Kubernetes commands without demonstrating production cluster management experience
• Generic DevOps experience without specific examples of platform engineering or infrastructure modernization
• Failing to show how your work improved service reliability or scalability metrics