Senior Software Engineer, Storage Infrastructure
About this role
Engineers who thrive on scaling large distributed systems and handling petabytes of spatial data will find a natural fit within this group. The storage team at Planet designs and expands the core object and metadata storage platform that powers the company's global satellite constellation and cloud-based platform.
Working across the stack, the incoming engineer will tackle object storage, metadata indexing, event notifications, and disaster recovery. The group handles data lifecycle management, search capabilities, and day-2 operations so other teams can focus on their own deliverables. An ideal candidate brings deep technical expertise, acts as a reliable advisor, and applies sound engineering principles to complex architectural decisions.
What you will do
- Build and maintain systems that provide efficient access to new and growing data sets.
- Extend and improve services for internal data search and image processing.
- Operate and tune Elasticsearch indexing for core data sets.
- Take full ownership of services by measuring performance, creating alerts, participating in on-call rotations, and responding to incidents.
- Determine methods and procedures on new assignments while evaluating variable factors.
- Contribute to the technical roadmap and help shape the architectural direction of the team systems.
- Participate in design reviews and help drive alignment on technical decisions.
What you need
- Bring 6 to 8 years of software engineering experience to the team.
- Demonstrate software development experience in Go, Python, or similar modern languages building production backend services and APIs.
- Show fluency with AI-assisted development tools like Claude and Copilot as part of the daily workflow.
- Possess experience monitoring and operating highly scalable cloud-native software.
- Understand relational datastores such as PostgreSQL or MySQL and non-relational datastores like BigTable or Elasticsearch.
- Demonstrate experience building, releasing, and supporting highly available and performant services.
- Communicate effectively and work well within a remote setting.
Nice to have
- 6+ years of Go development experience building production backend services
- 6+ years of Python development experience building customer-facing APIs
- Experience maintaining infrastructure with Kubernetes and Terraform
- Experience building services that leverage cloud-based infrastructure and tooling such as AWS or GCP
- Experience working with geospatial data before, even tangentially
Benefits
- Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
- Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
- Generous Paid Time Off in addition to holidays and company-wide days off
- 16 Weeks of Paid Parental Leave
- Home Office Reimbursement
- Monthly Phone and Internet Reimbursement
Skills and tech stack
Questions candidates ask
What is the remote work policy for this role?
This is a full-time, remote position based in the United States or Canada. If located near an office, you are expected to work from that office 3 days per week.
What is the compensation range for this position?
The Canada base salary range for this full-time position at the commencement of employment is $116,700 — $145,900 CAD. Additionally, this role might be eligible for discretionary short-term and long-term incentives such as bonus and equity.
What tools and technologies will I be using?
The role involves software development in languages like Go and Python, operating and tuning Elasticsearch indexing, and utilizing AI-assisted development tools like Claude and Copilot. Experience with relational and non-relational datastores is also required.
How does the team handle operations and support?
Team members maintain full service ownership by measuring performance, creating alerts, being on call, and responding to incidents and performance anomalies. You will also participate in design reviews and help drive alignment on technical decisions.