Visiting Staff Scientist

• Lead the research and development of Planet's proprietary geospatial foundation model (GFM) trained on PlanetScope imagery, incorporating time-series embeddings to capture dynamic Earth events.
• Benchmark existing geospatial foundation models against PlanetScope data and design embeddings for detecting short-lived, high-impact events like floods and fires.
• Publish findings in top-tier journals and present at conferences, while mentoring a postdoc and collaborating with research scientists to transition prototypes into operational products.

This role advances Planet's mission to create a 'Queryable Earth' by developing in-house geospatial foundation models that capture dynamic environmental changes, enabling better monitoring of floods, fires, and other rapid-impact events to support humanitarian and environmental decision-making.

• PhD and current Faculty/Professor status in Geospatial Analytics, Computer Science, Remote Sensing, or related field with 12+ years of experience in remote sensing and satellite image analysis.
• Deep domain expertise in building AI-based models for environmental change (e.g., flood-extent, water dynamics) and multimodal AI fluency with foundation models and contrastive learning.
• Expert-level Python skills with scientific stack (xarray, Dask, NumPy, Rasterio, GeoPandas) and deep learning frameworks; experience with multi-sensor integration and planetary-scale datasets.

Comprehensive benefits include Medical, Dental, Vision, HSA with company contribution, generous PTO, 16 weeks paid parental leave, wellness program, home office reimbursement, monthly phone/internet reimbursement, tuition reimbursement, LinkedIn Learning access, equity, commuter benefits, and volunteering PTO. US base salary range: $231,500 - $289,400 USD.

Planet designs, builds, and operates the largest constellation of imaging satellites, delivering an unprecedented dataset of empirical information via a cloud-based platform to commercial, environmental, and humanitarian sectors, with a mission to use space to help life on Earth.